From critical condition to cautiously optomistic

Some of you know I've been battling a cold for the last 10 days or so. Nothing too horribly dramatic, just stuffy/runny/snotties and a general blah feeling. Officially the "blah feeling" is called malaise. I prefer this term because it sounds much more sympathy-worthy than "blah." So I was suffering from generalized malaise and cold-like symptoms, and then on Wednesday night after my girls Bible study (hopefully not BECAUSE of my Bible study) I got a headache. I've had some headaches in my day, but this one felt like it could grow into a doozy. So I popped some aspirin and went to bed.

At about 5:30 yesterday morning I awoke to The Headache from Down Under (and I'm not talking Australia). It was so bad that I was almost convinced, despite all my medical studies, that my head might actually explode into a trillion tiny pieces. I took one of the two Percocet we had left from various drug dealers, I mean good friends, who'd passed them on to Dan when he broke a rib last Thanksgiving. You can tell we're big druggies in this house. The Percocet had probably expired in or around November of 1999, but I took it anyway, fell into a coma at around 6:15am and ended up waking up in a stupor at 7:45, realizing that Jake had to go to preschool in 30 minutes.

My heroic sister agreed to take Jake to school because I was failing the sobriety test just while walking from my bed to my bathroom, so I probably wouldn't have made it out of my driveway without being pulled over. Jake left with a granola bar in hand, and I collapsed into the recliner while Ty whipped us up some pancakes and an omelet and brewed a strong pot of coffee. Oh wait, he had a granola bar also. I had some Excedrin.

Ty watched a weeks worth of TV while I slept in the family room, may the Lord richly bless OPB and TiVo manufacturers. I thought I was feeling better after I'd slept, so I picked up Jake at preschool and realized, while making the kids lunch, that the Headache was going to come back in full force. Ty went down for a nap, and I called my doctors office and my wonderful mom came over while they squeezed me in for an appointment.

Sinusitis, says the MD. Sinus infection. Headache to beat all headaches. Honestly, the worst pain I've had since childbirth. I thought that after taking the 2 medications he prescribed for me last night that I was in the clear, but I woke up at 4:15 this morning and was seconds away from waking Dan up to tell him I had to go to the ER for pain medicine. I had taken the final Percocet before going to bed last night, and of course I didn't ask the doctor to prescribe any more because...I'm an idiot. I finally fell back to sleep at 5:30 and woke up with a dull ache which was upgraded to stabbing pain when I sat up, but hasn't been nearly as bad since then. The worst is over. It has to be, right?

Wow, all that to say, "Holy Headache, Batman." I have renewed sympathy for my patients.