Headache(s), or: Who Am I Without My Pain?

I've been periodically dipping back into my tape flags in Weaving a Family, and I've written many a dead-on-the-page false start in the last couple of months. This morning I sat down and went through my remaining tape flags, and realized that I don't have anything else to say back to that book right now. There are some topics in there, like the idea that we have an obligation to make our children culturally black, that I may find myself writing about someday. But for now, I'm done with that piece of this project.

What I want to talk about now is my health, because I find it interesting. You may not, in which case stop reading now, do something else more fun, and wait for another book post or cute story about my kids.

Many people know that I have chronic pain; I have had a headache for about fifteen years. Not "headaches." One headache. For fifteen years. It gets better and it gets worse, but it never goes away. Headaches are notoriously difficult to treat, but over the years I've had my share of tests and scans and trial medications. I've done physical therapy and had massages. I've meditated. I spent a week at a Pain Clinic ten or eleven years ago; that's where they send you when they decide you're going to be in pain forever, so you can learn how to manage it and live your life.

For a long time, I just lived with my headache, doing the things I knew helped, getting on with my life. My headache seemed complicated to me: my allergies affected it, for instance, but so did muscle tension (or it caused muscle tension--so hard to say). So does my tendency to grind my teeth, and TMJ problems. Getting treated for a vision condition called Vertical Heterophoria last summer was one of the most promising things I ever tried, but the improvement from my fancy new eyeglass lenses, though dramatic, was ultimately short-lived.

And then, in November, I had breast reduction surgery. I had thought about it off and on for awhile, but starting last year, all kinds of people I consulted for my well-being talked to me about it. My Pilates trainer, for instance, who told me that my efforts to improve my posture and mobility would be an uphill battle as long as I was wearing a K-cup bra, and a manipulating osteopath who undressed me, watched me stand and walk, and then said, "How attached are you to your breasts?"

Not very, as it turned out.

Now, I had heard from many women about the joys of breast reduction. "Your clothes will fit better!" they told me. "Your posture will improve! You won't get so many backaches!" So I expected some changes.

What I did not expect was that I would wake up from the surgery, and find that the constant pain, tension, and inflexibility in my neck muscles would be gone. Or that over the next few weeks, I would discover that the left side of my head, which for 15 years had been pain's last stronghold, the place that always hurt even when pain had receded from everywhere else, had also, for the most part, stopped hurting.

My head didn't stop hurting. But a headache that had always centered on my left temple moved to the top of my head.

What's more, it became clearly sinus-related.

This is what is interesting: it's as if removing the millstone I was carrying around my neck cleared away a layer of the pain's causes, like draining a lake to reveal the dead fish and trash heaped on the bottom. This is actually a big improvement; instead of this chaotic and confusing mess of pain from multiple causes, I can now identify pieces of it: this is because I was grinding my teeth; that is because my sinuses are really acting up.

Now, these identifiable pieces also feel more treatable. My doctor and I are beginning a plan to try to deal more effectively with my allergies, for instance--and we'll be able to tell if it really helps, I think, because this sinus piece of the pain will improve. I'm going to ask my dentist to check my bite guard; it might be time to go back to the TMJ specialist I consulted last spring, who suggested I start by getting checked for Vertical Heterophoria before we proceed with addressing TMJ issues.

The other strange thing that has happened since my surgery is that I seem to be having migraines, about one every two weeks. As migraines go, they're really not bad; I've seen really bad ones, taken David to the ER for them, so I know. Yesterday's headache, for instance, responded to migraine medicine and although I felt tired and a little out of it, I had a pleasant evening. Now I wonder if I was always having migraines, too, if they corresponded to some of my "bad patches," if that wasn't the reason that migraine medication sometimes--sometimes--helped if I was having a particularly bad head day.

Finally: sometimes, in the last 10 weeks, if I haven't especially been grinding my teeth and my sinuses are pretty clear, it has almost seemed like I didn't have a headache. "Do I not have a headache?" I would ask myself, and do a little inventory of my head. Always, deep deep in the stronghold of my left temple, I would find a starved and shivering remnant, a little bit of tight muscle or tendon, a spot that hurt if I pressed on it. "Does this even count?" I would ask myself. "If someone who hadn't had a headache for fifteen years had this very same tender spot, would they think they had a headache? I doubt it."

Yet I found--find--myself strangely unwilling, on those days, to say I don't have a headache. This is a very interesting phenomenon. You'd think I'd be dancing in the street, releasing a thousand balloons, calling everyone I know: "I don't have a headache!" You'd be wrong.

I can think of a few reasons why I might be unwilling to declare an end to pain. One is just that it's hard to let myself hope after 15 years. I've had promising stages before--right after my first set of prism lenses last spring, for instance--and the end of a promising stage is crushing. So I am not wanting to look head-on at the possibility of not being in pain; I'm only willing to kind of glance at it sideways. I'm not going to get my hopes up, no sir. I've been down that road before.

Another is that pain has been a part of who I am for a long time. Almost my whole relationship with David, for instance. Constant pain makes everything I've accomplished in the last 15 years: grad school, three kids, 13 years of college teaching, performing, leading workshops, babysitting, traveling, traveling with the three kids--much more impressive. I remember a few years ago, I threw one of the boys a birthday party in the middle of a really bad patch. There were, oh, eight kids at my house, and we did all the usual birthday party things: playing games, opening presents, eating cake and ice cream. When the last of the kids had been picked up, I turned to David, said, "I am a fucking hero," fell into his arms, and burst into tears.

Anybody can throw a party for 8 four-year-olds. Do it with the equivalent of a moderate migraine headache? That you've had for more than a decade? Best mom in the world!

I remember when I was being (very successfully) treated for a pretty serious anxiety disorder. When it was coming up on time to leave treatment, my therapist asked me to spend some time thinking about any reasons why I might not want to let go of my anxiety. That wasn't actually too much of a struggle for me--I was glad to put days when it was a triumph to shower, braid my hair, and walk to the mailbox behind me.

On the other hand, after that kind of drama, normal life, with all its unremarkable hair-washing and mail-fetching, can look a bit...pale.

I actually feel that more now with my pain than I did with my anxiety. Is it possible I actually feel some resistance to giving up being able to say, "I've had a headache for 13 years...14 years...15 years..." What if I never get to say "16 years"? Do I think I will somehow have failed to set a record? Was I planning a big party for our 25th anniversary?

I know that my friends and loved ones are eager to celebrate with me, should I become significantly pain-free. But will I miss their sympathy? Their admiration?

Will I lose some kind of moral high ground? Will I become...ordinary?

Will people expect more of me? Will I be able to live up to their expectations? Will I let everyone down?

What if it turns out that I really cannot do any of the things that I have thought I might be able to do, if only I didn't have this damn headache?

I'm scared that my optimism is misplaced, that this is just going to be another glimpse of sunshine through the endless clouds. I'm also scared that my optimism is not misplaced, that I am on the verge of moving into a new world, and that I will not know how to live in it.