Vacation Journal 8 of 8

Tuesday, 10/3/06

Back home

Monday morning held errands in Jasper, final paperwork on land purchase. On the road, head began to hurt. By hour five, I was still telling myself it was nothing... 4 hours later I was officially announcing the presence of "The Headache", popping two vicodin and breathing slow shallow breaths. For the next 24 hours, there would be two hot pokers angrily jabbing behind each eye, a growing concussion from a swinging baseball bat to the back of the head, pulse pounding in ears, and a mind teetering teetering teetering. (new treatment side effect for the ladies? it's the third documented sighting of The Headache, each occurring two days before the start of a new hormonal cycle, three months in a row.... this better be the meds)

"I'm cool with this", that is my mantra. It's not like you can simply distract yourself from this kind of pain. Imagine if you've just broken your leg... can you simply ignore it, sing a song, play a game of cards? No... you just have to be cool with it, which is, of course, totally impossible. But freaking out, clawing at my hair, screaming hysterical gibberish, would surely just make it worse, so I say to myself, "OK, I'm cool with this", then breath slowly and say to myself, "OK, I'm cool with this." Circling in mid air till time slips back closer to normalcy. Which happened this evening, just before dinner, back at home.

The vicodin didn't help much, by the way. Or maybe it did and I would have gone insane, in the cab of the truck, passing through Mississippi....