Sometimes heads just hurt
Jun. 3rd, 2009 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kate_schaeferBefore I start my dramatic story, I'll tell you the end of it: I'm fine. I have no need for dramatic tension here.
Last Thursday, Glenn and I were on our way home from the Seattle Symphony (perfectly fine performance of Smetana's Bartered Bride overture, world premiere of David Stock's cello concerto which I would rather not have heard even though the Symphony did a fine job and boy wonder Joshua Roman's solo stint was superb, and a Rachmaninoff that even Glenn, fan of Rachmaninoff that he is, concedes is the sort of thing that gives Rachmaninoff a bad name), when allover sudden it felt like three small bombs went off in my head: boom. Ka-boom. Ka-boom!
It was the most amazing head pain I'd ever experienced. It made the old Excedrin jackhammer seem like understatement. It made me yell, "Ow ow ow," and rip off my glasses, as if changing the way I saw the world would make the pain go away.
And then the pain did go away, and I felt mostly okay. There was a dull, residual ache, but it was as nothing compared to the cluster bombs of doom.
Fortunately, Glenn was driving, as I might have driven us into a wall just to make the pain stop. We went home, and I called a triage nurse, who asked a lot of questions and passed me on to a triage doctor, who told me to get the hell over to an emergency room right away, and he would call them to let them know I was coming.
Oh.
As anyone who has ever been to an emergency room knows, the rest of the night was alternately too exciting and very dull. Vital signs, blood samples, and a cat scan, followed by a doctor trying to persuade me to have a spinal tap as well. ("Your cat scan was normal, so you don't have a brain tumor and you're probably fine, but because cat scans miss about 1-2 percent of the subarachnoid hemorrhages, we want to do a lumbar tap just in case.") I turned down the spinal tap, because at that point the doctor was kinda reeling from tiredness, and the phlebotomist kinda scared me by reaching across the room when she had a needle in my arm, and I wasn't actually thinking too well. If you're ever in that position, say yes to the spinal tap, okay?
It was close to five in the morning by then, so we went home and slept for a few hours. I got up and called my doctor, and Googled while I was on hold.
It turns out that about 25 percent of people who have thunderclap headaches have them because they're having sentinel bleeding, and later on -- a few days or a few weeks later -- they have massive aneurysms, and lots of them die.
My doctor told me I was probably fine, but she checked in with her neurologist and radiologist friends (she says the main thing she learned in med school was how to reach anybody on the phone at any time; I notice that she learned a bunch of other things, too), and scheduled me for an MRI on Monday. That meant that I got to spend the weekend alternating between cheerful certainty that I was fine and morbid certainty that I'd die horribly and soon.
The MRI was painless and dull but very very loud. I knew immediately that I was fine, because the MRI tech (who had already said that he couldn't discuss the results with me) was cheerful and joking rather than solemn as he showed me pictures of my brain. I asked if he was going to send them to my doctor, and he said she'd just asked for a report, no pictures. I asked if I could have the pictures, and he said, sure. He gave me the CD of pictures from the cat scan, too.
And that's where I got the icon for this post. I don't recommend this technique.
I asked my doctor if all these tests gave her a clue about why I had the appalling headache on Thursday, or if all we had learned was that I wouldn't die from it. She shrugged her shoulders (I could see it even without the picturephone) and said, Sometimes heads just hurt.
Last Thursday, Glenn and I were on our way home from the Seattle Symphony (perfectly fine performance of Smetana's Bartered Bride overture, world premiere of David Stock's cello concerto which I would rather not have heard even though the Symphony did a fine job and boy wonder Joshua Roman's solo stint was superb, and a Rachmaninoff that even Glenn, fan of Rachmaninoff that he is, concedes is the sort of thing that gives Rachmaninoff a bad name), when allover sudden it felt like three small bombs went off in my head: boom. Ka-boom. Ka-boom!
It was the most amazing head pain I'd ever experienced. It made the old Excedrin jackhammer seem like understatement. It made me yell, "Ow ow ow," and rip off my glasses, as if changing the way I saw the world would make the pain go away.
And then the pain did go away, and I felt mostly okay. There was a dull, residual ache, but it was as nothing compared to the cluster bombs of doom.
Fortunately, Glenn was driving, as I might have driven us into a wall just to make the pain stop. We went home, and I called a triage nurse, who asked a lot of questions and passed me on to a triage doctor, who told me to get the hell over to an emergency room right away, and he would call them to let them know I was coming.
Oh.
As anyone who has ever been to an emergency room knows, the rest of the night was alternately too exciting and very dull. Vital signs, blood samples, and a cat scan, followed by a doctor trying to persuade me to have a spinal tap as well. ("Your cat scan was normal, so you don't have a brain tumor and you're probably fine, but because cat scans miss about 1-2 percent of the subarachnoid hemorrhages, we want to do a lumbar tap just in case.") I turned down the spinal tap, because at that point the doctor was kinda reeling from tiredness, and the phlebotomist kinda scared me by reaching across the room when she had a needle in my arm, and I wasn't actually thinking too well. If you're ever in that position, say yes to the spinal tap, okay?
It was close to five in the morning by then, so we went home and slept for a few hours. I got up and called my doctor, and Googled while I was on hold.
It turns out that about 25 percent of people who have thunderclap headaches have them because they're having sentinel bleeding, and later on -- a few days or a few weeks later -- they have massive aneurysms, and lots of them die.
My doctor told me I was probably fine, but she checked in with her neurologist and radiologist friends (she says the main thing she learned in med school was how to reach anybody on the phone at any time; I notice that she learned a bunch of other things, too), and scheduled me for an MRI on Monday. That meant that I got to spend the weekend alternating between cheerful certainty that I was fine and morbid certainty that I'd die horribly and soon.
The MRI was painless and dull but very very loud. I knew immediately that I was fine, because the MRI tech (who had already said that he couldn't discuss the results with me) was cheerful and joking rather than solemn as he showed me pictures of my brain. I asked if he was going to send them to my doctor, and he said she'd just asked for a report, no pictures. I asked if I could have the pictures, and he said, sure. He gave me the CD of pictures from the cat scan, too.
And that's where I got the icon for this post. I don't recommend this technique.
I asked my doctor if all these tests gave her a clue about why I had the appalling headache on Thursday, or if all we had learned was that I wouldn't die from it. She shrugged her shoulders (I could see it even without the picturephone) and said, Sometimes heads just hurt.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:04 am (UTC)I had an MRI last year, and wanted to make an animated GIF out of it, but didn't know how. Oh well.
(And here you thought I was Mr. Image Processor. Hah!)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 03:47 pm (UTC)I don't want to make an animated GIF, but I can see how that would be cool, because the pictures are stored in sets you can scroll through rapidly from side to side or front to back or (for the big veins) rotating. I think I'll print a selection out on fabric and make some clothing art.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:22 am (UTC)And I'm so sorry you had to go through all that to find you were OK.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:22 am (UTC)2. Aneuryisms are way scary. SO glad you are OK. I feel like I should say that several more times.
3. I have an inappropriate crush on Joshua Roman (insert Mark rolling eyes). We saw him several times while he was playing with the Seattle symphony and he is pretty fab. Although, much like Kai, he does NOT play well with other boy geniuses. That was pretty hilarious to watch.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:21 pm (UTC)2. Thank you.
3. Me, too, although he's less of a movie star idol now that his hair is too short to require frequent head-tossings to get it out of his eyes.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:27 am (UTC)What a very fine icon! Now everyone will want one. (I should have asked for a copy of my bunion screw that was unscrewing itself!)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:25 pm (UTC)A foot x-ray with a loose screw would also make a fine icon. You could just go for an icon of yourself having a lovely time in Italy, demonstrating that your feet work well now.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:29 am (UTC)I'm not good at worrying about serious stuff, I'm too much of an optimist.
At least I don't have to worry about you.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:30 pm (UTC)There are enough things to worry about without worrying about me.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 06:06 am (UTC)Sounds like a scary time. I'm glad they didn't see anything to worry about. Being me, of course, I'd probably continue to worry, but that's because I make no sense.
I fall asleep in MRIs, too.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:40 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm interested in all the stuff in the 75% as well, but I don't think I'll be able to find out what it was. All of the scary stuff was ruled out in my case: brain tumor, meningitis, pituitary tumor, pituitary bleed, and several other things. I was able to rule out one of the other common causes of such headaches, orgasm, all by myself without any tests.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:45 pm (UTC)Sometimes It Just Hurts
Date: 2009-06-04 06:49 am (UTC)The intern wanted to run a spinal tap on me too. Since by the time he got around to doing that he'd already tried to diagnose me with Graves' disease (yes, I look like I might have it - and you just wrote down on your little pad that I'm taking meds for the exact opposite problem) and it was a very new intern, I declined. My head had quit hurting by then too.
Since then I've had some more (although without the amazing stabbing pain) and we're associating them with sage, maybe. So I'm not eating sage rubbed stuff anymore.
I always feel 'fragile' for a day or two afterward.
Re: Sometimes It Just Hurts
Date: 2009-06-04 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 07:12 am (UTC)But before we got there, your story caught my eye for another reason. That must have been a mightily poor performance of one of my favorite Rachmaninoff works - sadly, I've heard it played badly before, so I know it's possible.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:59 pm (UTC)I don't think the Rachmaninoff was played badly. The audience overall was very enthusiastic, and the Times reviewer found it satisfying. I do not at all care for most Rachmaninoff, so it's not surprising that I didn't like it.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 10:37 am (UTC)(Tired. Posting fragments. Should go to bed.)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 12:23 pm (UTC)I had an MRI of my head too when I had some bouts of vertigo. To me it was like some weird percussion concerto. The neurologist told me they didn't find anything. At least with yours, they found a brain.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:07 pm (UTC)Are you still suffering from the vertigo?
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 02:00 pm (UTC)Really glad you're okay.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 02:15 pm (UTC)That part about not thinking too clearly when sick is one I am intimately familiar with. I was proud of myself for calling
Years and years ago I had what may well have been a migraine. At the time, all I could think was that my symptoms matched those of a a co-worker's sister who had a massive brain tumor. I didn't call 9-1-1 or anything; I laid there thinking, "it probably isn't a brain tumor and if it is, at least everything will be over soon." Umm, that was suboptimal at best.
This is one darned impressive icon. I hope there turns out to be no cause for it to be updated in the near or distant future.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:14 pm (UTC)Are you going to take pictures of your gallstones? Are they at all interesting to look at, or just evidence that you used to have a gallbladder?
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 05:12 am (UTC)I'm very glad everything turned out all right.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-08 06:26 am (UTC)I've had one friend just fall over with an aneurysm and be gone the two hours later (discovered by his wife later in the day.)
I'd guess we all (individually) will have something odd happen and then take comfort that it wasn't worse, or find out it was. Sometimes heads just hurt.
(Myself, surprisingly am now recovering from 3 pulmonary embolisms discovered after a normal operation last fall. And all things considered the doctors think I'm doing fine, and I feel fine, but golly, sometimes you run into that 1% failure, ...)