adrian_turtle

Last month, I posted about a medical procedure I was planning to have on December 16th. It was scary and expensive, but I was hoping it would stop my migraines for a few months. I knew it wouldn't be an immediate fix. Patients who have good results report some pain after the injection, even headaches as a side effect. And the good results don't happen for at least a week. The doctor told me to expect optimal relief beginning 2 or 3 weeks after the injection.

I have mixed feelings about this "optimal relief."

The first week after the injection was very, very, bad. The shoulder pain flare was spectacular, and referred to hand and jaw. And my headache got worse. And a lot of my coping mechanisms stopped working, because I couldn't use my shoulder. (This made me overuse my bad hand on the other side, which wasn't any good for me either.) Fortunately, the worst of that effect was temporary. My shoulder pain is back down to the level it was in early December, with a reasonable range of motion. The problem is that I can't lift much at all.

You might have thought I couldn't lift much before. I certainly complained about not being able to do the hands-on part of my work in materials engineering. I was unhappy about not being able to carry a preschooler, or a whole turkey with a lot of vegetables. It's different when a 5-lb bag of oranges, all by itself, is too much to carry home in my backpack. It's different when it seems prudent to return paperbacks to the library one at a time.

For all that, it DID help my headaches. I had a continuous migraine from 10/29 to 12/29. Since then, my migraines have been frequent, but not continuous. I've even had a couple of half-day intervals with no headache at all, which were just lovely. That hasn't happened since the summer of 2000.

Thus, as I said, mixed feelings.