Tag: Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia Headaches

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SYTYCD, Desmond Richardson, Claudia LaRocco & Dance Criticism, and Blasted TAC Headaches!

Obviously this is a lot for one post 🙂

First, my HuffPost on this week’s SYTYCD episode is now up. I’m still so excited Richardson was on this week’s show (I hope that picture I posted wasn’t too corny! — it’s the only one I have of him and I just felt like it was ‘real’ you know…) Anyway, I love Nigel Lythgoe for doing this, for working so hard to expand that show, bringing on all these renowned performers and choreographers, showcasing world dance. The group Bollywood number was fabulous. It’s so cool that TV audiences are getting to see the things people who live in the large cities take for granted and huge kudos to Nigel for that.

Second, I’ve had a head pain episode (I refuse to call them ‘headaches’ because those are the things people get that are alleviated with one Advil and a glass of water) since last Saturday, which is the longest one of these has ever lasted. My biggest problem, besides the pain, is that I was diagnosed with both common migraines and Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia, which is a rare neurological condition (although, judging by my blog stats, is becoming less rare) which I don’t entirely understand, but which causes severe, knife-stabbing-like pains to one side of the head, combined with numbness and sinus-like symptoms (loss of hearing, swollen, watery eye which I enjoy calling ‘golf ball eye’ because that’s how wonderful it looks, clogged nostril, and sinus-like pressure) to the same side of the face with the stabs. With a migraine it’s more like there’s a pounding or a throbbing or a pulsing than a stabbing, they don’t last as long, and there’s some sinus-like pressure but without the intense symptoms (no golf-ball eye or excessive tearing, no real hearing loss). Sometimes the migraine ‘just’ remains a migraine — I say ‘just’ because it’s obviously still painful in itself but at least it usually responds, for the most part, to my migraine medication. But sometimes the pounding is not really a migraine but the beginning of the TAC stabbing. Maybe a migraine can even turn into a TAC… I never know what medication to take (since I have different meds for each type, it’s dangerous to take more than one within a certain period and taking the proper one can make all the difference). I have a neurologist but there is so little known about this condition, he doesn’t have a lot of answers. And there’s nothing on the internet written for a lay audience, which is beyond frustrating. I’d start an internet support group if I had the time… Anyway, all that is by way of explaining why I haven’t been writing much lately…

Third, I was very excited to receive a comment on an earlier post from none other than Claudia LaRocco, poet and dance critic for The New York Times! Apropos of her recent post about dance criticism on her newish blog, The Culturist, and a conversation she’d had with another writer, she had asked what I thought the role of judgment was in criticism, whether it was inherent to the form. I’m still thinking about it, but thought I’d put the question up in case others have thoughts too. I think there has to be some judgment in the analysis. I think criticism that is poetically written is a joy to read on its own (Laura Jacobs writes like that as well as Claudia), and I do think criticism is an art form in and of itself. But I’m finding by reading Edwin Denby and some earlier dance writers that I still think there has to be some judgment about the dance, that speaks in way to where the dance and dancers stand in the canon of Dance and of performers past and present. You feel a sense of history and continuity of an art form when you read about it that way. And the critic can’t do that unless s/he says this is not that good because of such and such, this was really worthwhile because of this and that, etc. I know a lot of dance enthusiasts think negative reviews are responsible for decreasing audiences (someone posed that question to chief NYTimes critic Alastair Macaulay when he spoke at Barnard a while ago) but I disagree with that unless the critic really sarcastically blasts all of dance or something. And I still think every critic everywhere would have to be doing that all the time in order for it to have an effect. Arlene Croce said it’s the critic’s job in a democracy to be critical. People get upset when their favorite dancer or choreographer is criticized, but hopefully then there are enough voices around for a real debate — although with arts criticism this is unfortunately not often the case. I’m probably getting way off the point (my headache is still lingering!), but just wondered if others had any thoughts. You should also definitely read her post on the Culturist here where she talks about a workshop she recently led where she asked for different kinds of responses to a dance performance, and received some very interesting ones, like a poem written by a Colombian critic in response to a Maguy Marin piece (the video of which she embedded). I definitely think there is a place for some criticism like this — I agree with the commenter that the poem did make me see things I hadn’t before, but I think there needs to be more of what I mentioned above as well — with some judgment and analysis. Any thoughts?

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Survived Philip Glass Casket Concert!!

Hehehe, Kristin and commenters once talked about surviving an MRI by thinking of all the frightening noises (scary because you’re in a casket-like space for people who’ve never had an MRI) as like being at a Philip Glass concert (only dancers, right!) 🙂 So, that’s what I did! And it did help soothe the nerves! Thanks Kristin!! Doc wants me to have an exam every so often to make sure nothing has changed and to see if they can shed any light into my weird problem. One of the good things about writing this blog is that I was able to meet someone else (see comments here) who has the same neurological disorder. Kell found me on an internet search. We’ve been emailing back and forth comparing “life as a guinea pig” notes. But comparably I have nothing to complain about; I’ve realized how much worse others have it than I do. Hopefully they’ll figure it out at some point, for others’ sake more than mine. Oh, at least my exams are over for at least another few years 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Day of Merce and Frustration!

Yesterday I went to the Merce Cunningham exhibit at the New York Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. At noon there was a short, live, four-person performance of solos and duets right in the lobby. All dancers — two male, two female — wore blue unitards and the music sounded somewhat like the ocean. At times the dancers looked a bit like they were swimming. Of course it was abstract, but that’s what I got out of it.

I then headed into the exhibit, which was really pretty cool. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but this was my first experience with Cunningham (aside from the time Winger Tony Schultz and I saw him in the audience, wheelchair-bound, at another modern dance performance). Embarrassing to admit since he’s only one of the founding fathers of dance in this country! The exhibit was pretty comprehensive and very entertaining. They had videos of several of his works, all performed in the last ten years, but some choreographed far earlier. Cunningham himself danced mainly in the 40s and 50s. He is still choreographing, but of course no longer dancing.

The videos were my favorite part of the exhibit. They had several screens mounted on the wall, you took a chair hooked up to earphones and selected the music from whichever screen you wished to concentrate on. I actually found all screens mesmerizing and it was hard to focus on only one at a time. Funny thing, though, you really didn’t need to. The music (oftentimes sounds — of waterfalls, birds, people talking, etc.) seemed not to matter at all; you could have selected any soundtrack and watched any one of the screens. This, to me, marked Cunningham the complete opposite of Mark Morris, whose choreography is his rendition of that particular musical piece in motion. Also in contrast to how I personally felt watching Morris’s Mozart Pieces on PBS, Cunningham’s choreography was so engaging, I actually didn’t care what the sound was like.

My favorite video was called “How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run” which was accompanied not by music but by Cunningham and another man, named David Vaughn, reading bits of text to the audience. At times their voices would overlap so you couldn’t even really make out the words, at times you could and the text was very humorous, and at times you just couldn’t pay attention to the text because the moving bodies were just so mesmerizing, even though they weren’t doing anything tremendously virtuostic. One passage, read by Vaughn, told of a man who gave a lecture on how to attend a lecture. He instructed attendees to listen, which they couldn’t do if they were taking notes. One woman was taking notes. The man next to her told her she was not supposed to take notes. She quickly read over her notes and said to the man, “that’s right. I’m not supposed to take notes; I’ve got that written right here.” The audience laughed like crazy. Throughout the reading of the text, the dancers, wearing colorful sweaters over plain black leotards, would jump, hold each other and bounce, kick playfully, scamper across the stage, then do slower prettier arabesques, sometimes with an awkwardly bent standing leg. The movements kind of did and didn’t correspond to the text. If you watched it a couple of times, it did, in a way. For example, at one point Vaughn began a brief vignette in which two women went to a women’s business meeting, and at that point two female dancers would wrap arms around each other and hop on one leg around in a circle, then let go of each other and both hopped toward the front of the stage. Kind of goofy-looking, but then a man emerged and they began a complicated, serious, lift sequence with him. Is a business meeting silly, serious, or both at times? I don’t know. But I found the process of watching the piece a few times and arriving at different conclusions each time rather fun and invigorating. It was also cool to recognize one of the dancers, Holley Farmer, who was in the David Michalek films.

Then, they had tons of pictures of the company performing, from 1945 up through the present, another film showing an interview with Cunningham, numerous costumes some of which were quite colorful and interesting-looking to put it mildly (one was a leotard with aluminum cans taped to the legs! — wish I would have seen that piece!), a bunch of musical scores and choreographer’s notes (the latter of which looked like heiroglyphics to me and made me wonder how in the world choreographers notate a work to preserve it), and some posters by such great artists as Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol promoting the company on tour and at home.

Top pic is of Carolyn Brown dancing with Cunningham himself in the company’s early days, which was interesting to me since I’d recently seen her speak about her new memoir about dancing with Merce, at Jacob’s Pillow (in that picture that I linked to above, from the previous blog entry, she is the woman in the white dress). It was quite a long time ago that she had danced with him and, wow, was she was a striking beauty back then.

Anyway, for people in NYC, I urge you to check it out. It’s a real history lesson, a fun informative trip through time, since Cunningham is such a foundational figure in dance in this country. It closes on October 13th, so you still have some time.

I recently bought a new camera with more pixels, a more powerful zoom, and motion control (so as to take better photos of all the lovely ballroom dancing I will soon be viewing, like tomorrow!) Hopefully, the pics will be better than before (the picture in this entry is better than previous ones, right!). But I’m having trouble uploading from my new software to my Plogger. Spent a good deal of the day trying to figure it out to no avail. It has no problem uploading the pics from my former camera software (which it seems is incompatible with the new camera). Argh, I HATE technology — just can’t figure things out! So, for the time being anyway, I’m using my Flickr account to upload new pictures. I created a link down at the bottom of the blogroll to my Flickr page, which is likely where I’ll end up putting the pictures from the dance competition I’m about to head off to… Have to go pack!

Oh, and my TAC headache seems to be officially over, for now anyway. Yay! Thank you so much, you guys for your concern 🙂 I really appreciate it 🙂

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Eight Interesting Things About Yourself Meme

I was tagged by a new blog friend, Virginia Lee, for this meme. Ms. Lee found me through an internet search on SYTYCD and I’m honored to be included in her and her circle of friends’ “game of tag” — so thanks Virginia!

It was really really hard for me to come up with answers to an open-ended questionnaire like this and I’m not sure if any of these things are actually interesting or just weird (or not), but here goes:

1) I suffer from two somewhat bizarre disorders: 1) TAC (trigeminal autonomic cephalgia) headaches, and 2) Globus Sensate, or, depending on whether you’re a Freudian, Globus Hystericus. Of course neither disorder may be all that unusual: the first is often misdiagnosed as migraine headache, and the second is psychological, so when patients show up at their doctor’s office complaining of a strange lump in the throat that won’t go away and makes it difficult to swallow, speak and sometimes even breathe and all manner of medical tests are performed that yield no results, the medical doctor often dismisses the patient with an “it’s nothing,” “it’s all in the head,” or “just don’t think about it and it’ll go away.”

2) My favorite thing to have for dessert is a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles 🙂

3) I’ve studied French, Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin but can’t speak any language besides English. I can read street and subway signs in Russia though!!! And, unlike the other three, I can semi-understand Russian spoken by natives, so even if you only know a little bit, it’s not that hard to be a traveler there. It’s a heavy language and therefore must be spoken very slowly, so even Russians themselves can’t go flying through their sentences at lightening speed!

4) My great grandmother was a Blackfoot American Indian.

5) I’m really sensitive to noise and so, when I am working or sleeping, am easily bothered by other people’s TVs and stereos (NYC is a GREAT place for people like me 🙂 ) So, I drown it out with … tango music. I have no idea why but tango music works ideally for that. Other kinds of music — whether classical, pop, or other kinds of Latin, involve me too much, further reducing my concentration. For some odd reason, not tango!

6) After 9/11 I didn’t fly for over three years (was looking up into the sky at the second plane from a little too close), and I love to travel. So I then fell in love with long train rides and cruises (favorite train ride from NY is to Montreal and cruise to Puerto Rico). What finally got me on a plane again was a ballroom dance competition! I couldn’t afford to take off the time from work required to Amtrak it down to Florida (30 hours each way), and NY to Miami is a relatively short flight, so it was perfect. Still, I’m a very nervous flyer, and, since then the farthest I’ve been is only London (eight hour flight when going against the wind). I used to fly all over the place… I’m going to have to go to Brazil or something. Will just have to down a bottle of wine before boarding (perhaps something stronger….)

7) I’ve never pumped gasoline into a car before. I guess this is on my mind since I’m about to take a road trip (to Jacob’s Pillow, in the Berkshires, in MA). I moved to NYC when I was just out of grad school and had never owned a car before, and now never drive, so it was just something I never had the lovely experience of doing. My friends enjoy making fun of me though. Are self serves legal though anymore? In NY and NJ they’re not, but they were in the West, where I grew up.

8) I went to law school because I actually thought I could help change the world — through the LAW!!! So sad that this is a joke…

Okay, now I have to tag eight people:

1) Bellydancer Natalia, the very first commenter on my blog who I didn’t already know! (Thanks Natalia 🙂 )

2) My friend, of whom I am eminently jealous since she had the courage to leave law school: Parker. She’s a Bellydancer, Ballroom dancer, Ballet dancer, and possible future Burlesque dancer — if it’s a form of dance and it begins with a “B” she’s done it!

3) Theater dancer Erin, whose creative post titles have exposed me to all kinds of Broadway show lines and who has cracked me up many a time with her zany audition adventures!

4) My fellow ballet-lover, Oberon, who is perhaps even more obsessed with New York City Ballet than I am with ABT.

5) My fellow ABT-omane, Jennifer, whom I met here, but who now lives in CA and whose views from the West of our favorite ballet company I am really enjoying.

6) Ditto for Art, my newish blog friend, a fellow Marcelo-crushee and new Veronika Part admirer 🙂

7) M, my favorite ballet dancer / emerging choreographer to get into really REALLY funny dance fights with 🙂

8) open to anyone. If I accidentally left someone out who wants to take part, please do, just let me know when you put up your post so I can read it! (I left out people who look too busy gallavanting all over Europe, getting married, interning at big huge magazines in NYC, or who just haven’t posted in forever for whatever reason). Also, if tagees are too busy, don’t worry, I understand! This was ridiculously hard!

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Vestibular Rehab For the Dizzy Girl

NYU Rusk Institute

Since beginning dance a couple of years ago now, I’ve always noticed that I seem to get a bit dizzier than others, even when just doing a few simple turns in a row. Now that I’ve started to do crazier things, such as lifts where the guy holds me over his head and spins and spins and spins with me completely in the air with no sensory reception coming from a foot being planted firmly on the floor, the dizziness is getting a little out of control. For a few years now, on and off, I’ve also experienced, unrelated to dance, some short bouts of vertigo, which is really scary. That’s when suddenly the world around you spins and spins and spins, and you completely lose all sense of equilibrium, unable even to tell which way is up, which was is right, which is left, etc. I usually only got those every few years, but when they increased to every few months, I decided it was time to go to the ENT. He did a bunch of tests and, sure enough, I have a small but present vestibular malfunction stemming from an embarrasingly stupid experience I had many years ago flying with a severe cold, when I used those supposed ear stabilizers they sale in drug stores. The stabilizers had the opposite effect on me, the ER doctor told me, because I happen to have very narrow ear canals, something I hadn’t then known. I’d flown from somewhere on the East Coast — likely TFGreen airport in Providence — home to Phoenix to visit my parents for the holidays, and when I got off the plane, in addition to unbearable pain in my ears, I couldn’t hear a thing — I saw my mom running toward me grinning hugely, arms out ready to hug me, lips moving joyfully, but it was like being in a silent film. I’d badly damaged both eardrums, for which I received antibiotics and everything was okay, but apparently I have some permanent slight vestibular malfunction.

So, doctor sent me to The Rusk Institute, run by the NYU Medical Center, pictured above. I’m about half way through the therapy, which will likely last about 8 weeks (I go once a week), and it’s going pretty well. My therapist says I’m far more advanced than the other patients there, which is good, because they’re mostly very elderly people or stroke victims. Interestingly, he thinks my TAC headaches may possibly be related to this, but that’s something I have to take up with my Columbia neurologist…

Anyway, here is one of my at-home exercises:

Vestibular Rehab B exercise

I have to hold this piece of paper about an arm’s distance from my face and move it from side to side while keeping my eyes focused on the B, and while walking down a long hallway. It’s a lot more dizzying than it looks! I also have to, without the paper, walk down a long hallway and every two steps make a 180-degree turn. So, I walk forward two steps, then turn and walk backward two steps, then turn and walk forward two steps, etc. Then, I have to do the same thing but making a full 360-degree turn, every three to five steps. Those are actually easier because it’s a little easier to spot, as I’ve been taught in dance classes, since your head is whipping around in one rotation. But part of the point of the exercise is not to spot so that I habituate to the feeling of dizziness while walking down a street or turning in real life, when I’m not dancing and concentrating on spotting.

The funniest part is some of the in-therapy exercises. I brought in a tape of Luis and me performing our mambo routine to show my therapist the lift/spin that really makes me want to retch. He kept the tape and not only viewed it himself but showed it to the head therapist there, who is a former ballet dancer(!), and the head of the center, all of whom said it would be near impossible to habituate oneself to such a thing and that no one in their right mind would NOT get dizzy! So, my therapist has taken to putting me in a chair with wheels, making me lean my head back, and spinning me around and around and around and around. He said he got dizzy just watching me. I really almost lost my lunch the last time! But I’m just glad a ballet dancer-turned-vestibular rehab specialist agrees with me that my Latin teachers are a bit off their nuts 🙂

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Penis-Head, Non-Sexist Doctors, and Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia!!!

So, I went to Columbia Headache Center, spent several hours with a headache specialist, and this was my diagnosis! Not penis-head — that was Luis’s diagnosis. I had my films with me from a former brain MRI I’d had that my neurologist had given me to take to the headache specialist, and after looking at the slides, he told me I could keep them. So, since I go to the dance studio on my way home, I had the films with me, and when Luis asked me what was in the huge shiny silvery envelope marked “images” and I told him “my brain,” he said, “cool, I’ve never seen one of those before. Let’s see!” So there we stood in the middle of the studio floor, under the chandelier, looking at a bunch of small images of my brain from various viewpoints. In one of the shots that looked like it was taken directly above my head, Luis found an object that he thought was shaped exactly like a penis (only Luis!). I couldn’t completely make it out, but Luis obviously has much more experience with male genitalia than I do, so I believed him. He yelled, “now we know what’s on YOUR brain, Tonya!” He also found some shapes resembling grass and weeds… So, my diagnosis from the head pain neurologist was “Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia,” and my diagnosis from my gay dance teacher was “Penis Brain.”

Anyway, I’m very excited about my diagnosis — my official one that is! After patiently listening to me go on and on and on about my latest headache episode, the doc said right off I have this rare neurological disorder, so rare that not a whole lot is known about it other than certain meds work on it and certain ones don’t. And apparently it’s not dangerous, like stroke or aneuyrism-related, thank God! It’s just one of those things, where the person gets certain kinds of pain — in my case pain in one temple and side of my head and in my sinus cavities on that same side– as well as sinusitis-like conditions — congested nose, ear, and very watery eye and swollen lid. But there really isn’t a sinus condition, which is why the antibiotics the doctor had given me to kill the sinus and eye infections I didn’t really have, and all the decongestants, did nothing. And since it wasn’t a migraine, that is why the migraine meds didn’t work either. So, now I’m armed with an entirely new arsenal of meds for the next one. One even comes in the form of a shot! He taught me how to administer the shot myself. I have to stab myself the leg hard and fast. It kind of made me queasy thinking about it, but I KNOW the next time I have that severe of pain, I’m not gonna be thinking about being queasy! Because the pain and sinusitis-like conditions are brought on simply by the way the brain is structured, it’s NOT about caffeine, chocolate, MSG, cheese, stress, lack of sleep, or estrogen. It is just because it is, basically. So the reason I’m so excited about being diagnosed with a rare, scary-sounding neurological disorder? For one, I feel unique — how many people can say they have Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia?!? And, two, and most important, is that I feel vindicated! I KNEW IT WASN’T A MIGRAINE; I KNEW IT WASN’T A MIGRAINE; I KNEW IT WASN’T A MIGRAINE!!! So, NO ONE can tell to just deal with it until my period’s over, like a woman should, lie down with a cold rag on my head, not take on so much so as to stress myself out, or even just that I injest too much coffee, wine and chocolate. The doctor laughed when I screamed all this out at him. Even if they were migraines, he assured me, I was regurgitating the old decrepit school of thought — telling a woman she should take it easy lest she ‘compromise her delicate composition’ etc. If they were migraines, he’d give me meds responsive to migraines, not tell me I shouldn’t try to be a lawyer, writer and dancer at once. So, my doctor’s COOL! Because, honestly, another general pract I’d seen for these (yet another time my regular primary doc was out on vacation) told me exactly that: I was doing far too much and needed calm. And I remember him focusing on my job too… “You don’t really like being a lawyer, do you?”, as if such a profession was enough to mentally destroy any poor girl, or as if, even if I did hate it, that had anything to do with the fact that my eye was the size of a golfball, I couldn’t breathe out of one nostril or hear out of one ear, and it felt like someone was stabbing me repeatedly on the side of my head. Who would think that sounded even mildly like a migraine??? But of course they were migraines because I’m a female of child-bearing age, and that’s the kind of headache females of child-bearing age get. That doctor was near retirement (and now is, thankfully); my new head pain specialist was pretty young — late 30’s. And the fact he wasn’t far out of med school worked in my favor too — he remarked when he diagnosed me that he could barely remember this weird disorder from his textbooks; a doctor who’d been practicing longer, and never seen a patient with it, might not have. Ugh. I don’t give a damn if I sound ageist, but if older means too sexist to give a proper diagnosis and proper medical treatments, they need to change the way they think or get out of the profession.

Okay, off to bed. So I can get up early for my trip tomorrow morning to Martha’s Vineyard for beach and ballet!!

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Hooray for Benji, Hooray for Marcelo, Hooray for Karina, and Hooray for Dance Fans Who Need Cool Dance Wear!!!

First, congrats congrats CONGRATS to Benji Schwimmer who, as most know on Wednesday night, was named “America’s Favorite Dancer” on the ever-so-popular TV show “So You Think You Can Dance”! Here is a picture I took of him being declared winner on my sucky, cable-less TV set. Thank you to Benji (and Heidi) for officially putting West Coast Swing on the dance map!!! I don’t know Benji personally, but he seems like such a sweet guy, very genuine, very caring, not to mention a very versatile, charming dancer who showed that not only could excel at ballroom but could do everything from Fosse to hip hop too. I don’t know how to judge dance technique, especially when there are dancers from so many different styles all competing together, and people accuse the show of simply being a popularity contest, which in some ways it is. But I think the bottom line with being a performer in general is that, while it goes without saying you have to be able to dance extremely well, your personality also has to show through — that’s what audiences will latch onto. And those with the most personality, who know how to put on the best, most mesmerizing performance, will go the farthest.

This coming Thursday, Marcelo Gomes!, the great Brazilian ABT principal whom I’ve long been obsessing over (smiley face), is having the world premier of his very first choreographic venture out on Martha’s Vineyard as part of the annual performance by Stiefel and Stars / Stiefel and Students, run by ABT principal Ethan Steifel. David Hallberg, whom I’ve recently begun obsessing over (another smiley face), new ABT principal and Winger contributor, is dancing the lead along with Gillian Murphy; Stiefel’s summer students are dancing the corps. I managed to convince one of my friends, Alyssa, to make the trek out there with me to see it, and I’m so excited! I am always up for a nice ferry ride and am packing my Dramamine now! Into my Vera Bradley tote of course, ha ha, an essential for any travel to the Cape 🙂 This is my first time on Martha’s Vineyard, though I’ve been to neighboring Nantucket before, and damn is MV expensive! B&B accommodations are the price of a four-star hotel in other parts of the country! And many of these B&Bs advertise oh so important amenities such as Ralph Lauren bedsheets — ha ha! A real selling point for me! It’s interesting to me, by the way, how B&Bs in different areas sell themselves. The ones in Blackpool advertise quiet locale with single sex rooms, catering only to people over 50, etc.; the inns in MV advertise designer bedding. I think someday someone should do a study of what B&Bs say about the local culture they serve…

I am also excited about my upcoming trip to Hollywood, Florida, during Labor Day week (Sept. 5-10), to attend the U.S. National DanceSport Championships, the most prestigious ballroom comp in the country. Unfortunately, the event is held at the swanky hence exorbitant Westin Inn Resort and Spa, and blasted Trump has just bought the only affordable accommodation in the area, so this trip is going to be a big expense for me. Plus, the event admission fees in the U.S. are huge — much more than in Blackpool anyway. Yikes. Even when I’m only watching and not competing myself, this hobby is slowly draining me! And, all the stress of flying right now is not helping, to make a massive understatement. I’m one of those who’s been a VERY anxious flier since 9/11; then as now, I work two blocks from where everything happened (everything that happened in NY, that is). Plus, I always carry several bottles of water and fruit juice on board so I can take last-minute sinus and relaxation meds, “pop” my ears, and prevent dehydration which would, I fear, launch me into a horrid headache episode. It looks like that’s going to be a problem now; fortunately my flight is only 3 hours long. I booked on JetBlue, which I’ve never taken before, figuring that’d make it part of a new adventure for me. (And, because of its extensive , stress-relieving on-board entertainment system, my fellow post-9/11 anxiety-ridden office-mate, Michelle, recommended it.) I have to say, one great thing about dance is that it got me on a plane again after the attacks. My first time flying post 9/11 was last year’s trip to Billy Fajardo’s Hustle and Salsa comp in Miami. (Before that, I was taking only destination-limited and ridiculously expensive cruises and train rides… so yay for dance!). Anyway, regardless of expense and travel stress, this is my first time at this huge comp and I’m excited about that, excited about soaking up some sun on the Westin’s ritzy private beach, getting orthopedist-recommended dancer cross-training by swimming laps in their big outdoor pool, possibly even getting a good head and upper back massage for my headaches depending on the spa’s price, and enjoying good wine, food and Art Deco architecture in fun South Beach. Oh, and of course watching the greatest in the country compete for the U.S. title!

Also, I’m very excited because, according to their website, my favorite Latin goddess, Karina Smirnoff, is going to be joining Dancing With the Stars for the upcoming season! I know a lot of professionals dislike her, supposedly because she has a real ego and is not the nicest person, but I surmise it may possibly be chalked up to jealousy, since she gets a lot of attention. (She had a speaking part on Shall We Dance, and in Blackpool, her face was all over dance CD covers, posters, you name it.) Still, I think, artistically, she is the greatest Latin dancer in the world today, and I love watching her. I guess the show, being another “popularity contest,” will enable us to witness her personality for ourselves, right!

I also want to bring attention to The Winger’s message board. It’s a place where dance lovers can post messages about upcoming events, critical reviews, etc., and just talk to each other about their love of dance. It’s a lot of fun! Unlike Ballet Talk and some of the other message boards, it’s open to all kinds of dance and, unless you get really out of line, the moderators don’t restrict you in what you say. And, when you set up your profile, you can attach a picture of yourself (so that every time you post, your photo pops up, so you can feel like a real op-ed commentator, like Maureen Dowd or somebody!) or, you can select one of the many “avatars” Kristin has downloaded, to represent who you are. If you haven’t already, definitely check it out! Additionally, The Winger is now selling its own line of t-shirts and other dance accessories. The designs are very cool, we all need dance / yoga/ just hanging-out clothes, and it’s a lot more fun to wear something unique than sporting the typical Danksin / Capezio / Bloch lines. Plus, one message board member has said you can make your own design on the site. I’m definitely ordering at least one!

Finally, I have been caring for my little upstairs neighbor, Jones, while his mother is away visiting her boyfriend in Scotland. It’s been almost a year since my dear little Najma passed, and I am still missing her immensely. My allergist wants me to refrain from getting another kitty for a while to see if my allergies improve, which so far, I haven’t seen a change. So, it’s a great pleasure for me to kitty-sit! Here are some pictures of Jones and me!

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No Sexist Medicine!!!

Ugh, well three strenuous dance lessons last week including trying hard hard hard to do my oh so highly prized fish with no hands turned out to be not so good. Got sick all over again. Just a bad sore throat and cold this time, no flu thankfully, and, as of yet, no horrendous headache, but the weak muscles and bones and congestion have meant I had to miss a couple more dance lessons. Which I’m really not liking right now because my showcase is coming up very soon. I guess I have to not worry. Worry creates stress and anxiety, which is part of what’s keeping me sick, I must repeat to myself. Ad nauseum. I decided not to perform in the studio’s group class, which is not Hustle I found out, but Shim Sham, a form of Swing that I’m not familiar with anyway. It would have been fun but I have enough on my plate with my crazy fast Salsa/Samba/Cha Cha routine with Luis and my slow arty lifty Rhumba with Pasha.

My regular internist is back from vacation, so I went to see her last week about the hideous headache episode (see last two posts). She said regardless of the sinus x-rays it still sounded more like sinus than migraine and x-rays aren’t very good at showing everything that’s going on anyway. Since my general neurologist is not helping much, she decided to send me to a headache specialist. I have an appointment with Columbia University’s headache center next Monday. It should be good. They’ve already directed me to download several forms requesting detailed info on the pain and gather all my sinus and brain MRIs I’ve had over the years. I’m also gonna print out my blog entries describing this last headache episode (at least one good thing a blog is for!) and type out my old headache diaries. And I’m gonna INSIST that they not take one look at me, see ‘female of childbearing age’ and label me a migraineur. It’s sexist, unfair, and downright potentially harmful to me. Sexism simply has no place in medicine. I want them to consider all of the possibilities, and only after they’ve considered everything, including the male-dominant cluster episodes, will I let them tell me they could be migraines and proceed with the typical migraine meds. I don’t want to take those damn meds (which, as I’ve described before, constrict blood vessels serving the brain thereby causing frightening lightheadedness / light-upper-bodiedness and stress me out over the possibility of, at best fainting at an inopportune time, at worst suffering a stroke or heart attack) unless I know for sure my headache is a migraine and they’ll actually work.

Anyway, my throat is still sore and I still have gallons of post-nasal drip but hopefully, hopefully, I am now on the road to recovery and can resume my dancing later this week. I bought some killer Country Life vitamins recommended by a friend who had gastric bypass and couldn’t eat for months, and finally meekly asked my landlord to repair my broken air conditioner (the wonderful man bought me a new one after determining the old was irrepairable!), in case my crazy illness was related to that nasty heat wave we had. And, though my past week was sadly devoid of dancing, I did catch up on some reading. I managed, without vomiting, to get myself as far as my nearest New York Public Library to return a ballet videotape (ABT‘s The Dream), and, while there, found a copy of Kaavya Viswanathan‘s young adult chick-lit novel “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” which, thinking they were all pulled by the publisher after numerous allegations that either she or her editor plagiarized from several other YA writers, quickly snatched and read, out of sheer curiosity of course! And it actually was pretty good, I thought. It was a sweet, over-the-top comedy about an Indian girl whose parents push her so hard to get into Harvard that, in her quest to convince the dean she’s worthy of admission, she loses something of herself, which, through the course of the novel, she regains. Of course I don’t know how much content Viswanathan may have pilched from other writers since I don’t read contemporary YA (though ideas aren’t copywritable anyway), but something I know she couldn’t have “stolen” was the hyperbolic but truth-ringing parts about immigrant parents pushing their poor kids at all costs to realize their American dream. They were hilariously sad, and for capturing at least that, at such a young age (18), I think Viswanathan should be commended.

I also borrowed a copy of Colson Whitehead‘s new book Apex Hides the Hurt, which I think I was just too zoned out on meds to get, and Melissa Bank‘s The Wonder Spot, which I found surprisingly un-put-downable for being about rather mundane subject matter. It’s basically just about the life, from early puberty through adulthood, of this very ordinary woman who’s not particularly good at anything, struggles to find a suitable career, struggles to find a suitable man, struggles with losses of friendships and family members — it delineates a normal female life, basically. Yet it was a very interesting read for me. I find myself constantly struggling to be not normal, to be above average, to have everything — be a dancer with perfect technique and artistry, as close to professional as possible though I well know I started way the hell too late in life for that; I dream of someday winning a major literary award, but it’s incredibly difficult just to write the first draft of my novel with an intellectually- and emotionally-demanding 50-60-hour-a-week job as a lawyer; and I want to be this amazing lawyer who argues a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Supreme Court and writes formidable law books and articles, well respected as being at the top of my profession, but there’s no way I can even keep up with developments in criminal law outside of that required by my job with the writing and dancing. I guess Bank made me think, wow, some people, most people, almost all people in fact, just ARE, and that’s enough, that’s perfectly fine, that’s even interesting to read about. And Bank herself — I’ve often been so envious of her, as I’ve been of other writers who’ve had a bestseller or won a literary award or had their book made into a movie, but this is really only her second book and she’s not 15 years old. I mean, you can have some accomplishments, and still be ‘accomplished’ … as long as I have some things in life to be mildly proud of, I guess I’m okay; I don’t completely suck as a human being.

But then: across the street at my bookstore, I also picked up a copy of this month’s Pointe magazine, whose cover story features the illustrious David Hallberg, whom of course I’ve been gushing over for the past couple months since he just brilliantly danced his first season as an ABT principal (and has been writing smart little entries for The Winger blog). The mag contained mostly pretty pictures, and the story was way way too short for someone as sophisticated as he, but one thing he said at the end stood out. “Everyone blooms at a different time,” he said, and in the past three to four years he’s had to learn to calm down, have patience, stop “worrying about everything happening at once.” He’s 24 years old! So, at the ripe old age of 20 he had to force himself to stop obsessing over not yet being hailed as one of the world’s greatest dancers, which of course he now is; he’s definitely on his way anyway. So, hmmm, weighing Bank’s protagonist’s way against David’s — I choose David’s! Definitely. I guess even if it means HEEAADDAACCHE??…

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I May Be a Man…

I had my first dance lesson last night since my headache episode! I’m still a tiny bit hazy from the whole ordeal, but I’m so so SO glad to be dancing again! And, since one of the group classes was cancelled, one of the many former ballet dancers at my studio who’s training to teach ballroom was free to help teach me how to do my dream trick: the hands-free fish. A picture of real dancers (ie: Marcelo Gomes! and Gillian Murphy from ABT) is here. Oooh, but it’s soooooooooooo unimaginably hard! I couldn’t do it, try as I did. Your back needs to be so incredibly strong. It makes me realize how tough ballerinas are; elegant and graceful as they seem, their backs and legs are made of steel! I need to hook my leg around Luis’s back and hold myself onto him with that leg only. If I let my back collapse, I will fall to the floor. And it doesn’t look like it from the picture or when you see people perform it, but it’s so hard to keep your back arched and not collapse it. The ballet dancer gave me some serious exercises to do, mainly where I lie on the floor on my stomach and arch my back up to the waist as high as I possibly can, and hold and hold and hold and frigging hold. Ugh, it hurts! But I wanna be able to do this so so bad, it’s worth all the work! Happily, I’ve been able to sell Luis on it; he thinks it would be so cool to end the Latin routine with it. Consummate Latin dancer though he is, he’s been really receptive to much of my ballet-y suggestions — Luis’s great!

Tomorrow, I have an appointment with my regular primary care doctor to discuss my headache episode (see last post). The doctor on call phoned yesterday to tell me the sinus x-ray was normal. So there was no sinus infection, which scares me because that means it was neurological, as he said. I did some internet research today, and from what I’ve read, I truly think it was a kind of cluster headache, which is an extremely rare neurological condition, even more rare in women (at least 70% of sufferers are men). But migraine descriptions just don’t describe my pain very well. With migraines, you have pulsing pain on one side of your face, no necessary sinus connection, and you want to lie down and try to sleep it out. With mine, and clusters in general, the pain is sharp sharp sharp, boring, drilling into your skull, exruciating, searing, honestly even suicide-inducing, making the sufferer want to scream out in pain or even knock his or her head against a wall. One sufferer whose account I read described it as having surgery without anathesia, which is precisely how I felt, and hence was why I was begging the doctor, who laughed at me, for an emergency morphine injection. And your eye on the side of the face where your pain is located is watery and red, and you have sinus congestion on that side as well; not so with migraine.

Most interestingly, you absolutely positively cannot lie down with a cluster or the pain is even more excruciating; instead sufferers pace the room, walk, run, must remain active at all times, which is exactly how I was, to the confusion of one friend who commented that I “take pain like a man” — ie: actively jumping around, not passively lying on the couch. That characterization made some sense to me, but it wasn’t like I was trying to act like a man. When I read about cluster headaches (hereinafter “CH”), and realized they described my pain more precisely than migraine, and read that men are overwhelmingly the sufferers of such head pain, I realized I was possibly handling my pain “like a man” because I had a predominately male headache. The only part of the description that doesn’t fit me is that mine was one long, 4 1/2 day headache, whereas CH’s are typically 1/2 to 3 hours in duration coming and going throughout the day for a period of weeks. I found this amazing CH support group website and almost cried when I read some of the accounts. I know this is badly anti-feminist of me, but when I first read that most sufferers were men, I immediately thought, oh my gosh, I can’t imagine a man going through this. Last week I was literally walking the streets of Manhattan screaming and bawling out in pain, with cab drivers, store clerks, pharmacists, even a group of police officers in a deli where I went to buy ice taking pity on me, trying to hold my hand, helping me get to where I wanted to go. Not to mention all of my friends and co-workers… But in our society, which stigmatizes any male showing of pain or emotion, it seems a man would have to try to hide his pain, would never be able to act like this, or would surely scare people. Sure enough, some of the accounts on the support group website talk about running to the basement to pace, bang heads against the wall and cry and scream out, desperately not wanting wives and children to witness such a state of helplessness. Other men likewise talked of “not feeling like a man,” being humiliated, feeling out of control, etc. So much worse to have to deal with these societally-based feelings on top of this horrendous, horrific pain. And, in my New York example, especially with the police or even begging the doctor for injectible narcotics, so much the worse if the man is minority — he may automatically be suspected of being an addict or criminal… Ugh, so nasty on so many different levels…

Anyway, I’m gonna talk to my doctor about it all tomorrow, and ask her to consider sending me to a headache specialist instead of my same neurologist. Even if I end up with a diagnosis other than CH, I feel like I’ve learned about another sad world through all of this. Bottom line: if you know people who suffer from chronic headaches, of whatever type, please offer all the love and support you can, and please don’t dismiss them!!

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I Can Never Be a Drug Addict…

Though I’m feeling kinda high now! Have just overcome the absolute worst ‘headache’ I’ve ever had. Actually, I don’t think I’m gonna call them that (at least when they’re this bad) because the term somehow diminishes their seriousness.

It started on Tuesday evening, after a week of a flu / eye infection likely caused by the flu, while I was writing my last blog entry as a matter of fact, and consisted of a tightness in my left temple extending out to the center of my face. I took my regular Excedrin (which cuts off my minor headaches, especially when taken with Coke — nothing else works, and I’ve tried every over-the-counter drug there is, many many times). But Excedrin didn’t respond, and the next morning I woke up with real pain – tightness all around my head and now a pulsing in the left temple where the pain had originated. After another dose of Excedrin and a cup of coffee did nothing, I took a Maxalt (migraine drug) tablet. Two hours later, after literally feeling the blood drain from the upper half of my body (I HATE Maxalt’s side effects: it works on your migraine, which is a headache resulting from enlarged blood vessels bringing blood to your brain, by constricting those vessels, thereby reducing the blood supply to your head — a medical authority must deem you not at risk for stroke or heart attack before you’re given the drug needless to say…), the throbbing pulsing pain began to recede. But the tightness was still all around, and it felt like something was lodged in my sinus cavity, where my ear canal meets my throat (I had a sore throat and my ear needed “popping” as an effect of the flu). I waited until the lightheadedness, or ‘light upperbodiness’ rather, subsided, then somehow got myself to the subway, and on to work. About five hours later, the Maxalt began to wear off and the pulsing began again. I tried to follow it up with Excedrin, but to no avail. I took another Maxalt; this one did absolutely nothing, except make me feel the drain of blood from waist up. I took another (you can take up to three in a 24-hour period, but no more under ANY circumstances — I don’t like taking a single one to tell the truth), and this one had a minor effect. Tightness was slowly turning into sharp shooting pain, and throbbing was diminished but still there. I didn’t want to leave work and navigate the subway in such a condition — either with the increasingly excruciating pain or the upper body bloodlessness. My sweet co-worker and friend Denise (a fellow dancer, by the way — she does belly!) suffers migraines and insisted on accompanying me home. By the time I got home, the pain was horrendous — I felt shots of pain searing straight through my skull from side to side, and more pulsing in my left temple. The doctor who I’d seen on Monday for the sinus / flu / eye problem told me he’d be on call 24 hours until my regular doc returned, so, I called him. He said it sounded like sinus, since that was my original problem, and to focus on decongestants and not the Maxalt, and, as horrid as such a suggestion sounded in the heat wave, to take a very steamy bath — I really needed to clear my sinuses. I did as he said, and, unbelievably, while in the shower I did feel some relief, despite my 94 degree airconditionerless apartment. But when I got up to my loft to go to sleep, there was no way in hell my head was going near that pillow. I had to sit completely upright or it would feel like either the veins in my left temple, or the gunk trapped in my ear canal — I couldn’t tell which was the more apt characterization of the pain — were going to burst right out of the left side of my head, leaving blood and mucus and who knows what else all over the pillow. Seriously, I don’t mean to be gross. I was really scared I wouldn’t wake up if I fell asleep. Instead, I spent the night crying because of the, now 30-hour-long searing, pulsing,horrible pain, never knowing when it would end.

I waited for 9 a.m. to roll around, then called doctor’s office right away, making an emergency appointment for 2 p.m. But when I got to work, I couldn’t take it any longer. Finding me propped against the bathroom wall with a wet paper towel glued to my head, a co-worker asked what was wrong and I burst out crying. Another co-worker emerged from another stall and insisted I go to the hospital; head pain just shouldn’t be that bad unless there is something serious going on. Both wonderful women walked to my office with me and waited while I phoned the doctor to tell him if he couldn’t take me in now, I’d have to go to the hospital. The receptionist said to come in right away. Alexis and Lisa, and now Jonathan, another co-worker and friend from down the hall, helped me pack my things, turn off my computer, and get downstairs and safely into a taxi.

Doctor couldn’t figure me out. Which doesn’t surprise me since even my neurologist has never diagnosed my head pain precisely. She (neurologist) has insisted they’re some form of migraine because I respond at least somewhat to Maxalt, which supposedly only works on migraines, although no one in my family has ever had a migraine and they’re supposedly very hereditary, and although the pain that prevents me from lying my head down or holding it in any other position than upright is symptomatic of sinus congestion, whereas migraineurs typically wish to lie down on the side of the head from which the pain is emanating). Neurologist surmised that I had combination migraine and tension headaches. My allergist, however, says they’re likely almost completely sinus based, since I do have a deviated septum and other chronic sinus problems, and my sinus headaches are simply turning into migraines. My regular primary care doctor thinks they’re actual sinus infections and always gives me antibiotics, which may or may not work — they’re usually gone by the time I’m done with the penicillan. And, this doctor first thought it was sinus since I’d just had the flu, but upon seeing how much pain I was in in his office, decided they had to be something more; sinus pain couldn’t be that severe. He suggested possible temporal cluster headaches, which have both a sinus and migraine element but are tremendously uncommon in women (unlike migraines) and usually cause pain in the face, not the temple. He also said it might be neuralgia. Was in too much pain to even ask what that was, and I really more than anything desperately needed to be free of at least the searing pain. It had been over two days now. He said he wanted to send me for a sinus x-ray to see exactly what was going on in my sinus cavity, which was definitely a good idea, but there was simply no way in my state I could get myself around Manhattan. I couldn’t see cars coming at me on the streets, couldn’t read street signs very well — my equilibrium was completely off, I was having a hard time walking a straight line, and I was easily becoming disoriented. Normally, head pain associated with these symptoms would be a sign of a possible stroke or brain hemorrage, but since I’ve had the pain before (albeit not as bad) and since sinus conditions are also associated with loss of equilibrium and disorientation, he just didn’t take it seriously. He said after my x-ray, he’d place an order of Codeine — a narcotic drug that was so powerful it’d be sure to knock me out, which would be waiting for me at my pharmacy, a whole 50 blocks from his office. Okay, fine, but I need an injection before I leave, I told him. He looked up from writing the prescription. What? My allergist has given me on the spot shots when I’m broken out in hives and itching like a madwoman, so I assumed he could give me a shot of Codeine; I was actually going to ask for Morphine.

“I need it to get to the x-ray place and to get home,” I said. He chuckled and went back to writing the prescription. He wasn’t taking my pain seriously; I wasn’t going to get my shot; I was going to have to walk the streets of Manhattan in excruciating, blinding, disorienting pain. I started bawling, like a baby. I couldn’t help it. I don’t understand why doctors don’t understand headache pain. Headache pain can be completely debilitating; I felt for parts of this one like a guy who’s seriously injured in war and taken to a base hospital; I needed Morphine like he did. I cried harder, trying between sobs to tell him I couldn’t get myself six blocks to the x-ray imaging place without a shot of something to abate the pain. He laughed and said he didn’t have any Codeine on him, shaking his head in humorous disbelief at me. I asked him if I could have a shot of Morphine then. He burst out laughing. I cried harder.

Finally, he looked me in the eye and said, “What movies have you been watching? Do you realize what would happen if I had injectible narcotics in this office! Every drug addict in this city would be banging the doors down…” and continued laughing.

Oh. Didn’t think of it that way. I guess drug addicts are not breaking down the allergist’s door for a fix of antihistamine. Maybe I should have gone to a hospital. I mean, I don’t know if my insurance would have covered it, but they should if a person is unable to get herself from doctor’s office to imaging center to pharmacy to home without serious risk of walking out in front of a car. I thanked him, grabbed my prescription, and cried all the way downstairs and all the way outside, where I managed to find a cab driver brave enough to pick up the hysterical girl and drive her six blocks.

The people in the imaging place had no sympathy either. I asked for a glass of ice to hold to my head and they told me to walk down the street to the deli and buy one for 50 cents. After waiting nearly two hours, during which time I tried, unsuccessfully, another Excedrin, I was finally called to the back for my x-ray. Once I peered into the mirror of the changing room I saw that my left eye was swollen practically shut. This is now days after I’d started the antibiotics for the infection, which seemed to be clearing up. The technician who performed the x-ray was nice and took more x-rays than were ordered, as I kept pointing out to him that it was my left temple and ear canal that were hurting, not my facial sinus cavities, and he complied, taking pics of the whole left side of my head, in addition to the face. When I left I asked him if I was having a brain hemorrage, he looked at me like he’d never heard the term before. Said he was only ordered to look at my sinuses, and doc would get reports hopefully tomorrow. Tomorrow… if the Codeine didn’t work I didn’t know if I would make it through the night — both because I was worried about something — whether it be a vein or sinus cavity — bursting, and because I just couldn’t take the pain anymore; this was the longest head pain episode ever and I needed to know it would end sometime. I can honestly see now how people can become suicidal over pain.

Duane Reade pharmacy was a comedy of errors again. The heat wave crashed their computers so they couldn’t turn out any prescriptions. Clerk told me it would be a couple of hours. Not wanting to go back to my hot apartment, I managed to find a refrigerator with cold sodas, and held one to my temple while I crashed on the chairs. Soon, I heard the pharmacist calling out to me. I had my head in my hands, and had taken my glasses off since they had been bothering me basically since I began wearing them. When I looked up to see a figure in the distance wearing a white gown waving at me, I had no idea what was going on. I found my glasses, apologized and stumbled to the counter, where he told me he’d written mine out for me in his own handwriting since the doctor had explained to him how much pain I was in. Awww. But he needed to go over the instructions with me verbally since his handwriting was so crappy, he said, and when he did so, for some reason felt the need to impress upon me the importance of not consuming alcohol with this or any narcotic. Advising me not to drink for the third time, the clerk, who had just told me she likewise had a migraine, burst out laughing, and for the first time, since the ordeal, I nearly did as well. Poor Indian pharmacist had no idea what we were off about — that the idea that anyone with a severe headache would actually want to party was a riot. “Look, I am just trying to do my best to get this poor girl her medicine,” he muttered, embarrassed.

Well, apparently, I could never become a drug addict, because Codeine, one of the most intense painkillers, had the effect of: a) completely numbing my entire body, except for my head; b) taking away the throbbing in the left temple but; c) by breaking those throbs into tiny sharp sparks of pain; d) shooting the sparks of pain through my head to the other side so they could then shoot back across, thereby; e) making my entire head ablaze with sharp sparks of searing pain shooting back and forth across my head. I think I’ll take the throbbing in the one temple over this, thank you very much. I had no idea what to do: could I take Codeine and Maxalt together? I was going to GIVE MYSELF a brain hemorrage with the damn drugs. I dug out my neurologist’s card and dialed, only to discover she’d moved. Three phone calls later, I finally found her. After initially scolding me for for not having been in for a while, hence not knowing about the relocation, she told me I really shouldn’t take so much Maxalt and should follow up with acetominophen (Excedrin), or say, Codeine. I burst out crying all over again. She couldn’t understand my reaction to the Codeine: “Everyone responds well to Codeine, oh well!” she said as if I just told her I’d missed my bus. Ended up telling me to take the Maxalt through the weekend unless the pain actually subsided, and good luck! (Okay, and she also told me to come see her next week regardless of whether the pain was gone to discuss.)

I went up to my upstairs neighbor’s cool, air conditioned apartment (she’d offered it to me earlier in the week) and tried to prevent myself from thinking about my pain by playing with her cat. That pain aversion lasted all of 8 minutes. I tried to explain the intensity of my pain to her; she said she understood, she’d had horrible backpain, and could she offer me this great drug she’d been given: Codeine. Ugh. I came home and tried to blast the pain out by putting on head phones and cranking up my Latin dance CD I’d bought in Blackpool. When the time came that I could safely do so without drug interference, I took another Maxalt. Between the Samba and the pill, some of the edge actually went away.

Managed to sleep sitting up on futon Thursday night, and awoke Friday morning in same amount of pain. Maxalt was hardly working at all by now. I called Lisa at work to ask her to inform the front desk I was sick and check my mail. “Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen someone in so much pain over a headache,” she said, causing me to bawl again. Called doctor; sinus x-ray not in yet. When 8 hours had passed, I took another Maxalt, only to realize, to my horror this was my last one. I called the pharmacy and the nice Indian pharmacist told me I luckily had one more refill left; which he’d do for me. By that time, I was feeling light upper-bodied by the last Max, and decided to wait an hour before walking three blocks to pick it up. By the time I got to Duane Reade, Indian pharmacist had left for the day and the blasted computers were down again. A record-breaking heat wave is not a good time to be sick. Other pharmacist said he couldn’t fill it with the network down and to come back. I bawled again. Funny thing was that all of the bawling was making me feel a little better; I think it was literally relieving some pressure in my skull muscles. On my way back home, I got the idea to stop in the deli and buy a bottle of Coke. I found black cherry vanilla. At home, I popped two Excedrin and downed them with the Coke.

In half an hour the whole headache was gone.

So… when that ‘headache with something special’ comes on, I drown myself with Excedrin and Coke, they do nothing, I resort to Maxalt, which takes the edge away but not the root of the pain, I try to follow up with Excedrin but it does nothing, so I try more Maxalt, which now has decreasing effect, try to follow that up with a narcotic, which simply turns one pain into another more severe one. Then, after four days of excruciating, completely debilitating, even suicidally-invoking pain, I take two simple over-the-counter Excedrin and a black cherry vanilla Coke and it’s gone just like that.

Happily today, Sunday, was my first pain free day in over a week. I still have a bit of a sinus thing going, but my ear has popped, the eye is not dripping mucus, and my throat is not bulging red, and, most importantly, no head pain, either at the left temple or anywhere else!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so so so much to Lisa, Alexis and Denise from work, Rebekkah from upstairs, and Jonathan and Nicole for being such great friends and calling me repeatedly to check up (and make sure I was still alive) 🙂 🙂 For someone without a husband and family, friends are everything 🙂

I’m very excited to return to dance. Today was the last day for my eye antibiotics, and therefore, glasses! I stretched hamstrings and adductor muscles this morning. Ouch. But not as bad as I would have thought. And I transferred to video the routine Luis and I taped on the camcorder, watched it over and over, and wrote down the choreography (just so I can remember it in my own way; Luis’ll laugh at the writing!). I seriously can’t wait till tomorrow night at 7 for my lesson! Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of my sickness: one of me and my arsenal of meds, and one of some interesting ‘artwork’ my freezer made!