Episode 55: Headache, Nasty, Nasty Headache

Thanks, ClipartPanda!
She looks like my mom!

This headache has lasted about four days now, though it briefly disappeared today before reasserting itself most obnoxiously.

Despite medicating myself with Tramadol, which my kidney doctor told me I should be taking rather than NSAIDS--your typical, over-the-counter pain killers--as well as Aleve Sinus and Cold (containing an NSAID--but desperation leads to recklessness), and 3 tabs of Ibuprofen (another NSAID) and back to yet another Tramadol, well, sports fans, the headache remains.

And it's a bitch. Honey gave me a heating pad to put behind my head, along the skull base, where it and my neck were hurting.  But no sooner did the heat help that area that the headache moved to across the top of my head.  Meanwhile, a constant low-grade pain and pressure resides right behind my eyes.

I've had headaches over the years, including bona fide migraines, complete with vomiting.  These are not migraines, but they're fairly debilitating nonetheless. I know I don't feel like doing much of anything. It's Valentine's Day, and Honey had mercy on me and didn't even pressure me to make love.

He could see I was in pain.

That's one of the reasons I love that guy. Though making love to him is another reason I love him, and it would be nice to actually feel like doing that once in a while--but it's as if my sex drive switch has been turned off, literally. And not because Honey isn't the sexist, sweetest man alive.

But I digress.

This sudden onset of intractable headaches, combined with my also sudden and recent onset of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, can't help but make me think something more acute than mere neurodegenerative disease (with which I've been diagnosed) is going on.  Something becoming acute. What might it be?

Then I remembered:  Two years ago, when my episodes of weakness and breathlessness upon slight exertion began, an MRI showed that I have a mass in my sphenoid sinus.

According to the literature, any mass in that sinus--the one closest to the skull base--should be investigated. I was told by my Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist (ENT) that mine was most likely a benign polyp or cyst, and that was the end of it.  Unless it wasn't.

Tonight I did some more research and, in fact, even benign processes such as those suggested by my ENT, or mere inflammation, can cause symptoms such as headache--in the very areas mine has been hurting--and other neurological symptoms.  For instance, problems with the trigeminal (5th cranial) nerve may originate with sphenoid sinus problems.

I've had about five instances of trigeminal nerve neuropathy, in which a light touch beside my nose led to an electrical shock down the side of my nose and across the bone above my top teeth.  This is, in fact, the trigeminal nerve and one of its branches.

So now, sports fans, I can't help but wonder--is, in fact, problems in that sinus the root of my problems?  I've already said numerous times that my medical problems frequently originate in the hypothalamus, a little bitty part of the brain just behind the sphenoid sinus, that is responsible for regulating the hormones that control our autonomic functions--sleep, breathing, hunger, sweat, sex drive, etc.--all of which have been problem areas for me for several years.

Oh, well.

One can only speculate.

And one can call the eminent, wonderful Dr. A, her neurologist, Monday morning.

It sure can't hurt to take another look at that mass in that ol' sphenoid sinus.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if what is happening to me turns out to be curable, albeit with a rather nasty and risky surgery?  I'll take those odds over slowly degenerating neurological function, so here I am, almost hoping there is such a problem.

All I know is, I want this frickin' headache to go away.

Episode 45: On Being a Woman in the Face of Debilitating Disease, OR That Pesky Hypothalamus!

I'm in trouble with one of my sons again. That is, I think I am, though I do tend to be slightly paranoid about his feelings for me since we don't get to see each other very often.

And probably rightly so--the being in trouble, I mean. I used a rather fun, risque photo of myself to illustrate a point on one of the episodes of this show, and apparently that made my 30-year-old son feel icky, especially after some of his friends, who are also my friends on Facebook, apparently razzed him about it. Now, my son is thirty years old--I'm not talking about a child here.

I didn't think the photo was even close to pornographic, but I can understand his discomfort. But nowadays body parts are displayed all over the Web and in text messages ad nauseum, so I don't think my playful photo--uploaded simply to make a rhetorical point, and it took me a year to get the guts to do it, but I made the sacrifice for my art--is really that scandalous. One must be edgy these days, mustn't one?

After all, said squeamish son DID do the lead singing and guitar playing in a punk band all night in one of the bars in the town where I live wearing nothing but a DIAPER, so it's not as if he leads a life of modesty!

Anyway, hopefully, I'm imagining all that. I love my kids dearly and don't like any hint of being on the outs with either of them.

Yet I still feel the need to write about being a woman--a relatively young and sexually active (though less and less so of both)--woman who is coming (no pun intended) to grips with the effects of chronic disease on her sex life.

The effect, in short, is numbing--a metaphorical cold shower on the hormones and neurotransmitters responsible for sexual arousal and pleasure. This, at least, appears to be the culprit in my case, having recently been diagnosed by my neurologist with progressive (a nice way of saying "degenerative") neuromuscular disease.

My faithful following (of statistical vampire sites, at least) knows that I've been convinced for some time that my hypothalamus is going wacko.

Yes, sports fans, my HYPOTHALAMUS, of all things, is failing me.

I've been convinced of this for some time, even before my neurologist diagnosed me with this neuromuscular disease of unknown etiology, still to be determined.

My money is on myotonic dystrophy based on a reasoned review of my medical history and the MD disease profile. Not tangential is recent proof that myotonic dystrophy's effects are caused by imbalances in, you guessed it, that cute little hypothalamus.

It's time for all of us to become friends with our hypothalamuses!  Now, there's a great word.  Or should it be "hypothalami"?

So, what is a hypothalamus anyway? 

Well, you have one, or you wouldn't be reading this right now. Or doing anything else. Like breathing, for instance.

Episode 27: Mary Dell, MD (Medical Detective)

This episode promises to meander somewhat.

I've decided to give myself an MD after my name.  That's right, Mary Dell, MD.

NO!  Not Medical Doctor--believe it or not, this isn't about my ego, and I don't pretend to know a fraction of what physicians and other health professionals know.  I've been interested in a few very specific health conditions, since they have affected members of my family, and since I became a smorgasbord of chronic disease myself.  I don't want their jobs.  I don't like dealing with blood and guts.  I like research, on anything at all, really, but since these medical problems keep plaguing me and folks I know (like all of us), that's what I'm researching these days.  And, heck, I'm a bona fide medical librarian, so I know how to do it.

No, just call me Mary Dell, MD, for Medical Detective. And this is the Mary Dell Mystery Disease show.  MD MD, MD--

Will that get me hired to consult for House?  Ha.