A short history of my headache

In June 2007, life was good. I was doing research on HIV testing in a busy, urban emergency room. I had a spot waiting for me at a medical school that I had never dreamed would accept me.

One night, I woke up with the worst headache of my life. Working in emergency medicine, I knew that The Worst Headache of Your Life meant something terrible was occurring in my brain. I went to the ER, got a CT scan and a spinal tap. Normal, normal. Diagnosis: migraine.

They started out as an occasional hassle, turned into a weekly problem, began to affect me academically. I got referred to a migraine specialist through the medical school. The best. He has knock-out mice who get migraines.

Started on Namenda for prevention. Imitrex for symptoms. Then Maxalt. Now Relpax. The Namenda helped for a while ... but now I get a migraine every day.

The medical school wants me to be evaluated to make sure I am physically able to continue my training. I am waiting for a phone call to set up this appointment. I wait.

I realize that I have not been suffering nearly as long or as badly as some of my fellow bloggers. I am lucky. I just wanted to orient you to my brain.

PS - I apologize, that wasn't as short as I wanted it to be. But I really had to get the mice in there.