"Mommy's Head is Going to Explode, Let's Watch"

When things have gotten too noisy or crazy around here I have often told the kids that my head was going to explode.  Once Eme even said: "Mommy's head is going to explode, let's watch."  The funny part was that I wasn't even in the room, it was Eric who was dealing with the chaos of our children at the time.

In February, when I got hit with that awful stomach bug, something far worse came with it: severe "thunderclap" headaches.  Within a week I had two "10's" and an "8", they came out of no where and left a severe headache in their wake for days.  I saw my doctor, who ordered an MRI/MRA to check and see if these were secondary (bad) or primary (not so great) headaches.  My kids all thought it was cool that I was going to get a picture of my brain.

Contrary to my belief that over time my children have turned my brain to goo and then it leaked out of my head, the MRI did indeed show everything was still intact.  It also showed that everything was perfectly normal.  Since I was still having terrible headaches (going on several weeks without one break), I made an appointment to see a neurologist.

My neurologist is a wonder.  He ordered some blood work, and put me on a steroid for a week to see if it would, like water on a fire, put out the headaches.  For one glorious week (which coincidentally was Spring Break), after 7 straight weeks with a moderate headache, I had perfect relief (and w/o any side effects too).  And then the steroid wore off, and the headaches came back (and I had the unfortunate side effect of 3 lbs weight gain in 2 days, BOO!).

I had another appointment on Monday.  I just love these super technical medical terms: Chronic Persistent Headache.  I've started some new meds (Topimax) to deal with these headaches.  They come with their own fun set of side effects, some silly, some odd, some just weird, we're just hoping they do the trick.