The Throb

Yes I know....lame post title. I was not quite sure what to call this. It is time once again to start jotting down my medical and symptom notes which some may find frightening or boring. If I do not record it however I will forget it (as is starting to happen already).

The question is: Is it a symptom? Is it the oncoming of a cold or illness? Is it a migrane? Is there another tumor growing or working its wickness?

This is what goes through the mind of someone with NF2 or even cancer or any other serious illness in which symptoms or signs of something more pertinent
needing attention would appear as just something ordinary to other people. Did that sentence make sense?

Sometimes when something occurs I get so used to it that I start to make myself believe that it is normal or I withhold from doctors thinking I may seem like a hypochondriac or the problem will just go away in a few days.

Here is the deal:

Saturday was my longest marathon training (4 hours). I felt fine the morning of, during the training, and afterward. However, Sunday morning about 5 or 5:30 am I awoke with an excrutiating headache. Was it actually excrutiating? Hell I don't even know anymore. I have gotten used to pain and all these side effects that sometimes I just think it is normal.

At any rate, I had to take some pain relievers in order to go back to sleep. I convinced myself that I was coming down with whatever ailment Harley had when we returned from the SW. Therefore, I started popping vitamin C and echinacea like mad and making sure I had adequate rest. I even bought this bottle of "Emergen-C Immune Defense" tasty rubin lemon honey losenges. They were kind of like sweet tart candy or chewable vitamins that fizzed in your mouth.

Despite my drinking of echinacea tea, 100% vitamin C juice and my supplement popping, I continued for days to have the throbbing headache concentrated mostly in the front of my head and behind the left eye. (Note: On Friday and Saturday of last week I experienced some mild jabbing pain in my ear as if the start of an infection. At the store on Wednesday evening, the pain also included the back of my head and the left side of my neck or region around my ear.) The area mostly concentrated on the left front side of my head behind my eye. Is that where I have that other big meningioma??? The pain also made me nauseated which I thought I was done with. I hate being nausous. I had to eat however (which helped the nausea) because I could not take pain relievers on an empty stomach.

This happened daily throughout the week at various times of the day. We went to the grocery store after our walk on Wednesday night and I could not tolerate really to look at stuff long or even be there. It occured again and was making me sick. Again yesterday late morning I felt nauseated and got relief after having a yogurt.

Today I seem to be doing pretty good. The last couple mornings however, I have awoke to slightly swollen eyes (the skin on the eye lids). Both evenings I got plenty of sleep.

The headache has not occured yet today so I am at a crossroads on what to do. Do I email all my doctors and tell them about it? I don't think I am feeling stress right now that I am aware of. Last eye visit I had my neuro-opthamalogist thought I might be having stress headaches. Fortunately the pain seems to be relieved through a non-aspirin pill. Normally I have depended upon I-B profen and at certain times over the last couple years I only experienced relief when taking Excedrin.

Like I said, I have to log it here so I can keep track or I will forget about it or what happened. It is hard to know whether I should cry wolf to the doctors when I actually don't know if it is a wolf.