Inner dragon: HAWMC #8

With eyes closed, migraines form odd-shaped clouds, usually the brightest red or the darkest black. There may be a sky beyond them – leaden grey and uninviting. I let the waves of colour wash over me, pulsating, crashing and echoing against my skull. With the turn of each tide, I wait for the moment; the moment when the storming brain grows quiet.

I’m a right handed ”castaphobic”, so when I badly fractured my right wrist in 2009, I used creative visualization to watch the small, delicate bones knitting themselves together with tiny needles and wool. Each x-ray displayed the splendor of their work; when the cast was taken off, they stayed back in the shadows.

There are other phantasmagorical health–related experiences shaped by colour, creative imaging, or stories made when my head was buried by the sheets. Cautiously, I pull back the bedclothes a fraction of a fraction. I don’t know which I sense first – the smell of burnt toast, campfires and bb guns; or the deafening yet somehow melodic sound of scales being shaken, undulating like the wave at sporting events, or the large red-rimmed eyes catching every movement.

You see, a dragon lives in my abdomen. She likes to project herself as a holograph, a magic lantern show, Imax in 3D with my bedroom wall the screen. She does hibernate. Then, she occasionally shifts her position as she sleeps; shaking scales and tail; flexing wings while dreaming of flying. Awakened, she lashes with her tail, digs her talons in, and unfurls her wings.

I recently found one of my journals from 1982. There are images of six years of dragons, snippets of words not quite poetry, and wonderings. Twenty-five years on from her moving in, I find it hard to imagine life without her. She is a part of me; a strange symbiotic relationship.

Related articles

• HAWMC Day 21: Adversity (misdiagnosedme.wordpress.com)
• HAWMC Day 19: And that’s the was it was… (misdiagnosedme.wordpress.com)
• HAWMC Day14: spread the love (justanotherspoonie.wordpress.com)
• Day 15: Sharing #HAWMC (chronicchroniclesblog.wordpress.com)
• HAWMC Day 18: Asking for forgiveness… (misdiagnosedme.wordpress.com)

chronic illness: a risky business

doctor, my face hurts

{wordpress won’t let add links back to the IBS on About.com, or the initial question about risk. Nor will it let me put spaces between paragraphs — it’s not really one run-on sentence!}

Barbara Bradley Bolen (IBS on About.com) recently discussed clinic trials of new medications for the treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). The drugs involved carried serious side effects – some so severe as to lead to death. She posed the question, “How much of a risk would you take to get better?” Response to the query varied with some folks willing to participate in a clinical trial, knowing that this could be “risky business.” Others were more cautious, weighting the impact IBS had on their lives against potentially serious and life-threatening side effects.

I’ve been faced (please excuse the pun) with a similar dilemma in terms of my chronic facial pain. In 2006, I had a temporary Cervical Medium Branch Block at the point where two nerves are impinged on my neck. This impingement was one source of the layers of chronic facial pain. The nerve block held for about a year and a half. With one type of chronic facial pain reduced, I got out of the spiral of increasingly larger dosages of opiate-based pain medications. Over time, other sources of pain such as phantom tooth syndrome* and osteoarthritis of the jaw added to the convergence.

Pain management is a nightmare mix of strategies and medications. For example, Lyrica helps reduce only the nerve-based pain. I use a homeopathic gel on my face and nape of my neck/top of my spine to counter the aching effects of osteoarthritis. Sinus surgery (a similar operation done on the right side in 1995) might stop the almost continuous sinus-based pain and pressure. Physical therapy might

loosen up the neck, and help with the spasms.

For me, the “risky business” is choosing permanent nerve block for facial pain management. The potential benefits are obvious: a reduction in pain levels and thus pain medication. This positive outcome needs to assessed against the negatives involved with this procedure. The block has to be precisely in the right location for the facial pain reduction or alleviation. There is the possibility of partial or full paralysis of the left side of my face, mimicking the effects of a stroke.

So far, the risk of paralysis keeps me from having the permanent nerve block. But that’s this afternoon (early the next morning when I post this) when pain levels are manageable. When the layers of pain – the constant throbbing, aching, stabbing, pressure, electric shocks – are in convergence, the procedure seems more worth the risk.

Back to the initial question concerning IBS: since my first episode of IBS in 1978, there hasn’t been a day without some digestive issue. IBS is like the nosy neighbour, the bothersome relative, the annoying co-worker; they are a part of your life whether you like it or not. Today, my abdomen isn’t too distended, the cramps aren’t cutting me in half, the acidity level in my stomach is relatively low and Zantac makes the acid reflux symptoms bearable. However, like the permanent nerve block, ask me tomorrow. I might be willing to put more risk into the equation.

*phantom tooth syndrome is similar to phantom limb syndrome. Folks have healthy teeth (that are aching/causing pain) pulled to stop the pain, but the missing tooth still hurts. In my case, the worst tooth has no nerves left – it was root canalled twice. But, it aches, throbs, stabs as it did when it was abscessed and untreated for several months. My version of atypical odontalgia “laughs” at my attempts to manage its pain; I’ve yet to find a treatment that does much to reduce this constant and annoying companion.