Saturday, November 14, 2009

A killer headache

I slept rather fitfully last night, getting a good chunk of sleep in the early part of the night. Marty was up quite late (both of us occasionally have these nights when we're too keyed up to even try to sleep), so when I woke up after he had finally gotten to sleep I didn't want to disturb him, because I knew how much he needed his sleep. Somehow I managed to drop my itty bitty booklight off the bedside table and, feeling around in the dark, I found the main part (including the bulb, which amazingly didn't break), the batteries, the battery cover, but not the shield that goes over the bulb and directs the light. I was even able to get it put back together, and read for awhile without the shield, which created much more glare. (You can see what this looks like at www.zelco.com.) Eventually I woke up at about a quarter to eight, with a splitting headache, and since I wanted to let Marty sleep as long as possible, came into the living room. I took some morphine, which didn't even put a dent into the pain, and the next hour or two was sheer hell. It was a combination of a sinus headache and pain across the whole front of my head. Eventually Marty got up, and gave me some tylenol and some ativan, and with some additional morphine I was finally able to get the pain under control. I then spent a couple of hours totally doped up, which was much better than being in pain, but unpleasantly non-functional (I was trying to do the Boston Globe crossword, which is pretty easy, but kept drifting off so that it took me well over an hour to finish it). Given the choice between pain and being so drugged, I'd definitely take the latter, but it wasn't fun.

It's now mid-afternoon and I think the worst of the drugged feeling is over, and my head doesn't hurt, but it looks like this is going to be a totally wasted day. I hope we can find the missing part of the booklight, but since both Marty and I have trouble getting down on the floor (and especially getting up again!), it may have to wait until the next time a PCA is here. I know that Marty has some interesting events today and tomorrow, but right now I can't even imagine feeling strong enough to want to go out.

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