I liked Amanda's idea of choosing a general theme to describe what's moving her this Monday, so I jacked it -- but at least I am honest about my thievery!

In the wake of a miserable last week, I've decided to give in and surrender to the forces beyond my reach that wreak havoc in my life. I've come to the conclusion that sometimes it's better to actually lose the war because in doing so, one is forced to come to grips with one's weaknesses and limitations and to find a way to work with, through, or around them. Such is the case with my cluster headaches and seizures. And so, Brain, you win this time! With white flag in hand, I surrender to the power of your electrical impulses. For today, at least. . .

White Flag by Dido




Sweet Surrender by John Denver




Surrender by Elvis Presley

Today's random thoughts aren't completely random; they are things that have been stuck in my head for a few days and now need an escape. Lucky you!

Random Thought #1

After three years of flawless duty, I retired my iPhone 2G and bought a 32-gig iPhone 3GS last Friday. The decision to retire the 2G didn't come easy -- it works fine and does everything that I need it to do when I need it done. However, with the launch of iPhone 4, I learned that Apple would no longer support my trusty 2G, leaving it stuck with an outdated operating system. Considering all the nifty things that the iPhone OS4 is supposed to impress me with, it didn't make sense to hang onto what is now an outdated phone.

I know that patience is a virtue -- one that I need to work more seriously on improving in myself -- but waiting for an iPhone 4 was not on my agenda. Yes, it is the newest model and thus offers more time before becoming outdated like the 2G, but both Apple and AT&T have a backlog of orders for them. Besides, there's an issue with the antenna and reception and signal strength with the 4 that doesn't exist with the previous models. And seriously, what was Apple thinking in making both the front and the back of the phone out of the glass that is usually only on the front? I'd be terrified of cracking the darn thing because since it is so new, couture cases aren't readily available for it yet. And a lady has to have an awesome case for her iPhone!

So far, I'm thrilled with the new phone. Although I'm still in the process of adding wallpapers, music, and apps, what I have put on the phone so far works like a charm. But best of all, the newest Apple operating system, which I LOVE, is compatible with the 3GS! Now my gorgeous phone displays the wallpaper at all times, makes videos, and lets me organize apps into folders for a relatively clutter free screen. Oh, the joys of technology!

Random Thought #2

The rescue kittens are ready for new homes. Honestly, I have never given away kittens before and have no clue how to go about doing it. I posted on Facebook that they were ready for forever homes, but the only response I got was from dear friends who (1) live in different states and (2) already have enough pets. The AED says to put them on Craigslist, but I am concerned about the weirdos who thrive there. Any suggestions on how to get the word out that I've got three litter-trained, affectionate, purr machines in search of loving homes?

Random Thought #3

I think that a tribe of dirt-tracking ghosts lives in my house. Honestly, with only the AED and I at home these days, I am amazed to find that I can sweep and mop on Monday morning and find the ceramic tiled floors that the AED insisted we need looking like they haven't been touched for weeks by Tuesday afternoon! At least with the rugs (commonly called "Persian" carpets, but ours came from Egypt), I can attribute the need for daily vacuuming to the cats because they roll around and play on them and leave behind traces of their antics in the form of hair. But the ceramic tile? Where does all the dirt come from?! It's time for a seance to out the ghosts who seem to think that I need to go through life with a broom and mop attached to my hips!

Random Thought #4

I have the sweetest husband ever! For the past week, I have been in the throes of a cluster headache cycle with some of them being so intense that I now understand why this type is called the "suicide headache." With headaches coming several times throughout the day and lasting anywhere from 10-15 minutes to several hours, life hasn't been a lot of fun these past several days. Twice last week, I was completely down for the count and unable to go to the warehouse with the AED. Both times, he came home with a gift that he knew would make even a cluster headache seem inconsequential -- ice-cold Coca-Cola in a tall glass bottle. What a guy, and what a lucky woman I am to have him!

Random Thought #1

Do you ever have days that start off perfectly fine -- Mary Poppins-like in fact, kind of "practically perfect in every way" -- only to have them go dreadfully wrong only a couple of hours later? Yesterday was like that for me.

I was on the ball and ready to conquer the world starting just after 3:00 a.m. In a couple of hours I managed to answer the business email, sort my personal email for answering later, complete the Monday meme posts, scoop the litterboxes, brush two of the four longhair cats, unload the dishwasher, get a new load of laundry started, and harvest my crops on Farm Town. James Brown's song "I Feel Good" was the anthem of the day. Then a single phone call brought it all crashing down around me.

I wasn't really paying attention to the time, but I think that it was shortly after 9 when Betty's estate attorney called. Evidently, he received a phone call from one of the daughters of Betty's deceased husband because she, after a single visit to Betty in the 8 years that she has lived at the board and care facility, was concerned that I might be mismanaging the trust. I don't think much of anything could have shocked me more than that phone call, but I do know that it's been a very long time since I was as angry as it made me!


This individual has no real relationship with Betty, has not bothered to check up on her except for a phone call last Christmas when she told the caregiver that she would come to visit but never showed up, and now, out of the blue, is "concerned" that her care is not being managed well? Where has this person been all these years? In a neighboring city, certainly not too far away to demonstrate this "concern" by visiting Betty to make sure that she is being well cared for. Last week was the first time in eight -- count them, I said E-I-G-H-T, years that Betty's caregiver ever saw this person! How's that for "concern"?


Random Thought #2

After yesterday's "excitement," I've had a headache that doesn't want to give up the ghost and die. I know it's because the anger is still seething in the pit of my stomach, bubbling to the surface every now and again to remind me how utterly brutal people can be. I can't place the blame for this one on The Brain; nope this misery is my own fault. At least the headache is not one of the Chiari types, so I am left to conclude that this must be the kind of headache that "normal" people get, LOL.


Random Thought #3

Surgery update (yes, Aunt Nola, this is for you): Next Thursday, the 27th, I am scheduled to have the thyroid surgery that should have happened last November but didn't because my pre-op blood work showed an elevated white blood cell count that turned out to be an indicator of the very nasty cold that made itself known on Thanksgiving. I have the pre-op appointment on Monday and barring any WBC issues, I will be AWOL for one day next week. Unless I have a seizure or some other Chiari related complication, the surgery is supposed to be out-patient. I am going to discuss with my doctor the possibility of having it done under a local instead of a general anesthesia as this significantly increases the likelihood that I will get to go home on the same day. Besides, how cool would it be to lie awake on the surgery table while a surgeon slashes a hole in your neck and takes out half of your thyroid gland? Sounds awesome to me!


Random Thought #4

Classes begin next week, and I feel sad. No school for me. I'm retired, remember? No animated discussions about censorship in the public school classroom. No more interesting essays defending the First Amendment as it applies to websites with disgusting content. No more introducing the uninitiated to John Milton's Areopagitica or John Stewart Mill's On Liberty. No more poring over the ALA's list of banned books to see which ones we've read. No more. No more. I'm sad.

And did I mention that I'm pissed off, too?

Tired and REtired accurately describes me for the past couple of days. No sitting around munching on bon-bons and watching soap operas all day here. So much for the glory days of retirement!

Despite really looking forward to the Thursday Thirteen meme, I just didn't have time to get to it today. Not that this is necessarily bad; it just means that I'm having another good day and have the energy and concentration to get some more work done. I might could get used to this!

The visit with my wunnerful wunnerful neurologist, Dr. S, went well. We're changing my anti-seizure medications again as the Dilantin has never really reached the level in my blood stream that it should in order to work effectively. Instead of continuing to increase the dosage of a drug that just ain't cuttin' the mustard as my Grandma used to say, I'll go back on Topamax. I did have some issues with Topamax causing brain fog a while back; however, I'm no longer teaching and required to have unfailing mental acuity on demand. I'll take a bit of fogginess over clusters of seizures any old day. Besides, Topamax has three delightful side effects from which I gained some additional benefit in the past and hope to see again:

• it causes weight loss
• it is also used to treat and prevent migraines
• it will allow me to stop taking two, possibly three, additional medications

The next couple of weeks will be challenging as I take both the Topamax and Dilantin until I reach the previous dosage of 100 mg of Topamax twice daily and start to wean off the Dilantin. Been there, done that -- at least half a dozen times -- and will survive it once again.

It's been a few days since I had the chance to do anything but my regular memes, so it's time for me to play catch up. Let me tell you what's going on in my world.

Betty's condition is improving. Because she can't eat by herself, a feeding tube was inserted through her nose and into her stomach. Even though she was seriously drugged for the pain, she didn't like the tube and managed to pull it out a couple of days ago. Rather than put it back in, the vigilant nurses have been feeding her whenever she's awake and alert. It worked like a charm. She is now alert and talking, which means that she will be moved from ICU to a regular room once the chest tubes are removed. That should happen today or tomorrow.


I had some real excitement on Thursday afternoon with my retirement paperwork. In the midst of Betty's illness and my going back and forth to the hospital, I received a letter from the retirement agency indicating that they had received my application and asking that I contact the university's HR department to request that they not remove me from the insurance roll while the application is processed. So on Wednesday afternoon, I did as instructed. Much to my surprise, I got a response from the HR person who helped me take care of the retirement paperwork indicating that the university can't do what CALPERS had requested. It took several phone calls and faxes for me to learn that although I should have been removed from the insurance roll on July 1, a mistake that I made has worked in my favor. Because I turned in the application paperwork directly to CALPERS, the university doesn't know that I am retiring; therefore, I am still on the books, so to speak. No lapse in insurance coverage, which the only reason that I took an early retirement in the first place! Big sigh of relief.

The sorry state of my state has gotten worse. I didn't think it was possible; I was wrong.

• California still does not have a budget.
• We have no money to meet our financial obligations and such a bad credit rating that borrowing is not a possibility.
• Unemployment is now just above 10%.
• Our sales tax was recently raised to help raise funds but since so many people are worried about losing their jobs, they are not shopping enough for it to do any good.
• We're in the third year of a drought so bad that water rationing will likely happen before the end of summer.
• Just yesterday, I heard on the local news that the consistent increase in water temperatures on our side of the Pacific Ocean have made 2009-2010 officially an El Nino year. Rather than go into all the details now, I'm going to use the Thursday Thirteen meme to talk more about El Nino and its effects on the Golden State. Let's just say that it gets really ugly around here when El Nino pays us a visit.
• Our fire season, which normally starts in September and goes through October, has started early. The dry brush, thanks to the drought, on the hills and mountains surrounding Los Angeles, coupled with the outward sprawl that occurred over the past decade, has set up ideal conditions for a far more threatening fire season than normal. It doesn't surprise me that the hills have started burning three months earlier tha usual.

My headaches seem to be under control for the time being. This is a very good thing. Does the absence of headaches mean that everything is well and good? This is my life, peeps -- nothing in it is well and good at the same time! The stress factor is currently high and with stress comes headaches, seizures, and eczema. It's been several days since I had a headache, but The Brain doesn't like to play understudy to my life for very long; therefore, It makes its presence known through seizures. Thankfully, the four that I've had in as many days haven't been too bad. Now the eczema, my body's stress-o-meter, isn't doing as well as the headaches and seizures. I'll save you the gory details and say only that my hands are covered with a rash and blisters that itch like mad. And now, add to the seizures and eczema a sciatic nerve issue that is giving me grief at the area of the right hip. Yesterday was w complete waste because the pain was so bad, I used a couple of Naprosen to help me get out of bed and later, off my chair. In spite of all this, things could be so much worse.

Here's wishing everyone a great weekend!

I've spent much of the day on the pity pot thanks to a paralyzing headache that started shortly after 7 this morning. The Amazing Egyptian Dude woke up much earlier than usual and told me that he would be going to the business as soon as he finished drinking a cup of coffee. I had been up for a couple of hours already and laid down on the couch for a short nap before class.

I don't know how long I slept before that familiar brain freeze type pain struck on the right side of my head. That's the kind of headache that makes moving next to impossible. Although the oxygen tank was right beside me, I couldn't get up off the couch to turn it on or to put the cannula on. I just lay there, frozen in time like the Lady of Shalott. Then I heard the Amazing Egyptian Dude! He hadn't left early after all. When I get these headaches and need to get his attention, I whistle; he's got some significant hearing loss and would never hear me if I tried to call him with words because the pain is so intense that barely a whisper comes out.

I whistled and waited.

And I whistled and waited.

And I whistled again.

Nothing.

I could hear him across the room but just couldn't muster the strength to do anything else to get his attention. It took several attempts, but he finally came over to check on me. Turns out he had heard me from the beginning but thought that I was dreaming and making noises in my sleep, so he decided to hang around to wake me up for class!

Cafergot and oxygen later, I could move at least. The pain had dulled to a livable level but the time that happened, it was too late for me to go to class. Besides, I try not to drive on headache and seizure days.

So I missed my class today, The Brain bit me in the butt big time, and I am frustrated as all get-out over the whole damn situation. I've never been "normal," but this level of uniqueness is really getting to me. I want to be in control of myself for a change instead of taking the passenger seat to The Brain and its electrical thrill seeking.

I miss me. I miss my life.

Is that the sound of the wahmbulance I hear in the distance?

We have a family owned and operated business that keeps us pretty busy. Each of us takes care of a certain aspect of the business and together, we keep it running fairly smoothly most of the time. And then, there are those days when The Brain gets in my business and prevents me from taking care of business, thus adding stress to everyone else's business. Such has been the case for the past two weeks.

Iman, our newlywed daughter, takes off every other Friday because her Awesome Egyptian Dude, has the day off from his job. (Note that my Egyptian Dude is Amazing, hers is Awesome.) Under normal circumstances, this isn't a big deal because I am in the office picking up the slack that her absence leaves. But when The Brain asserts its authority, things get really interesting on these Fridays. Like yesterday, for example.

The day began with a headache. Not a bad one -- certainly not bad enough to cause me to test out the newly acquired oxygen tank, not even bad enough for me to take more than 2 Ibuprofen to knock it down. The dull thumping was definitely something I could deal with, and deal with it I did. I processed orders for shipping, answered telephone calls, and shuffled paperwork all around for several hours without incident. The Brain maintained its presence but instead of taking center stage, played overseer to my activities from behind the scenes; however, The Brain couldn't be without the spotlight for very long. And so it was that during a phone conversation with my favorite aunt, The Brain, flipped the switch and sent a jolt of electricity through my body. Thankfully when the seizure came, I was not the one talking; I was listening. When The Brain decided that playing shock therapy was no longer fun, the usual coughing fit began.

A cough, cough here. My aunt began to sense that something wasn't right.

"Your headache isn't making you cough like that, is it?" she wondered.

"No," I answered honestly. "My headache isn't that bad, really." My family worries too much about me, and this call wasn't about me, no matter what The Brain thought. My aunt returned to the conversation, and The Brain returned to the coughing.

A cough, cough there. And my aunt pauses. "Are you sure that you're ok?" How do I tell her, without freaking her out, that I had a seizure? She worries enough already and, like my other family members, knows that stress is the typical trigger for my seizures. If I tell her that I had one while she was talking to me, she'd end the conversation, worried that she had been the cause. "I'm fine," I reassured her. But The Brain had other ideas.

Here a cough, there a cough, everywhere a cough, cough. "Carleen," my aunt said nervously, "something is wrong! Why are you coughing so much?"

"It's nothing, really. I had a seizure, and the coughing is The Brain's way of letting me know that it's finished. No biggie," I told her. A seizure that is followed by so much coughing is one that requires a nap right away, and I knew that; however, I was not about to cut off the conversation and leave my aunt worrying.

I fought the need to sleep and finished the conversation. It was mid-afternoon and I knew that if I took a nap at that point, I wouldn't sleep at night. The Amazing Egyptian Dude, who had wandered in and out of the office during the whole thing, packed me up and took me home as soon as the call ended, hoping that I would give in to The Brain's demands and sleep.

I did fall asleep, but not before an amazing thing happened. In Greek mythology, Zeus gives birth to his daughter Venus in a most unusual way: fully formed and already an adult, Venus emerged from her father's head. I am now convinced that The Brain studied Greek mythology a little too much in college because,


after intense labor that included four more seizures, a Diva was born yesterday. Why? Because The Brain is convinced that it's

Post about 5 favorite things from the past week. It can be anything that tickled your fancy: favorite quotes, posts, happenings, scriptures, recipes, pictures, great internet finds, etc., etc. Be as detailed as you like, the more detail the more fun for those of us visiting. Susanne, the hostess, just asks that it be kept family friendly. Click here to play along with us.

First, I have to say that I have the most amazing neurologist ever! Not only did she squeeze me into her tightly packed schedule, but she did so on her own time. When I got to the clinic today to sign in, the receptionist was confused because Dr. S, according to the schedule, was not in today. Following the instructions that Dr. S emailed me at 8 last night, I was to tell the receptionist to call upstairs for her. When Dr. S's assistant didn't even know that I was coming in, that's when I knew what this wonderful physician had done for me. I wish that everyone had such a caring physician!

Because I didn't want to take up too much of her time, I made a list of symptoms on the notepad on my marvelous iPhone. Dr. S read the list, asked some questions, checked reflexes and so on, and then told me what she thinks the problem is. She is pretty sure that I am having clusters of cluster headaches with a few migraines thrown in for good measure. So what do we do for them?

First, I will be adding a new medication to my ever-growing pharmacy. I've forgotten what it's called, but it's a medication commonly prescribed for high blood pressure that also works well for migraines. My blood pressure is fine, so that's not an issue. I'll start on a low dose of 40mg twice a day. The pharmacy in her clinic didn't have the med; however, the one closest to my home does. The Amazing Egyptian Dude will pick it up on his way home.

Second, oxygen. Oxygen, says Dr. S works wonders on cluster headaches. Soon, the pharmacy will deliver an oxygen tank and mask to my home. Then the next time I get a cluster headache, I am to use the oxygen for up to 30 minutes, and it should solve the problem.

We shall see.

• Gawd, the heat is back! Camry, the otherwise loveable kitty, is in heat again. This time, though, she's gone beyond the chirping of a week or so ago and has moved up to the full on cat calling. She rolls all over the floor, yowls at my feet, and walks with her hind end up in the air as if it's on display for every Tom in the household. Unfortunately for her, the only Tom is Marlowe, who was neutered several years ago and would rather play chase the mouse than set up house. I keep telling myself that it's only a few more days until her spay appointment, but I don't know if I can last that long. I had completely forgotten how utterly obnoxious female cats in heat can be!



• The Brain is still throwing its weight around. I spent much of the weekend fighting off headaches. Sunday looked really promising, as I didn't wake up with a headache as I have been; however, the headache's kissing cousin showed up after I had been awake for about an hour. Same thing on Monday. I woke up with a headache shortly after one, had a seizure at 1:24 a.m., then another at 3:48 a.m. Although I had been headache free since about noon, another seizure came at 7:16 p.m. You know, The Brain is beginning to remind me of those crazy dictators in North Korea and Iran -- throw its weight around long enough to make me nervous, then slink away to watch the worry that follows. Thankfully, Dr. S will be on call for a week starting on the 19th, and that's when she's going to do her best to squeeze me in to see her.
  


• I'm not a big fan of Western movies. Never have been. I wasn't inspired to watch them when, as a kid, I learned that the Red Ryder Round-Up, the annual rodeo in my dad's hometown of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, was held in honor of Fred Harman, an elderly man I knew who also happened to be a famous author and illustrator of a comic book series of the same name. Heck, Mr. Harman's creation has maintained its fame thanks to one young boy's obsession with getting a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Still, I wasn't interested in watching cowboy movies. Even when John Wayne filmed The Cowboys in Pagosa and my grandmother called to tell us that she had lunch with him, I wasn't really interested in seeing the movie. I've seen it since then, though. Anyway, the only Western movie that I can honestly say I feel is worth watching is Lonesome Dove, based on Larry McMurtry's novel of the same name. I saw the movie when it first aired on television, then bought and read the book. It was every bit as awesome as the movie. So when I learned that a 20th anniversary airing of Lonesome Dove was on this weekend, I watched it twice -- between naps!
  


• I've been itching to change my blog template and design. I really want a 3-column design that has the post portion sandwiched between two sidebar columns, but I haven't found one that I like yet. If only I weren't graphically challenged, I'd design one myself! Alas, until I overcome the challenge of the puny-pixelled or win the lottery and can afford to pay for a customized one, the quest for a freebie continues.


• Am I the only one who thinks the whole David Letterman vs. Sarah Palin, et al is ridiculous? Considering that the economy is floundering, we're fighting a couple of wars in foreign countries, North Korea is issuing thinly-veiled nuclear threats, Iran is in an upheaval over the possibility of a rigged election, and we can't figure out how to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable medical care, don't you think that Governor Palin's rhetoric would be better served addressing some of these issues instead of a couple of jokes made by a late night talk show host? If this is a taste of what's to come should she become the Republican front-runner for the next presidential election, I want to buy stock in the production company that handles the soap opera version!
  

Coming out of a seizure and happily filled with Cafergot, I decided to scout around for some interesting memes to play with. While surfing, I found this cool widget -- is it a widget? I don't know for sure! -- that tells how many people in the US have the same name as you. As if I didn't already know it, my suspicion about my uniqueness is now officially confirmed!

About my first name:

• There are 6,132 people in the U.S. with the first name Carleen.
• Statistically the 2397th most popular first name.
• More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Carleen are female. (Ya think?!)
  

About my last name:

• There are 5,549 people in the U.S. with the last name Ibrahim.
• Statistically the 6414th most popular last name.

Put them together, and you get this:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 1 or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

How unique are you?

Just a quick update to let everyone know that I have survived the day so far. My neurologist is wonderful, I swear. I got an appointment with her on July 22, the soonest one available, but I emailed and asked if she could get me in sooner. Because I'm not really a complainer, she knows that if I want to be seen, I'm miserable.

Part of the problem I've been experiencing with the headaches is that I have medications for each of the different kind that I get. Over the past week, they have been alternating from one type to the other which makes choosing the proper medication at the correct time difficult. The end result is that I suffer because when the Ibuprofen doesn't work, I don't know which medication to take.

I've been given the go-ahead to skip the Ibuprofen and go straight for the Cafergot. It's straight caffeine and works on "the hair of the dog that bit you" principle. Now you'll know why that idiom just had to be on my list, LOL! Dr. S said that it won't hurt me to have a couple of doses more per day than the bottle says. She asked if I wanted something stronger for the pain and when I said that I did, she knew that I was in trouble. Peeps, I am so afraid of using pain killers that I have had 6 major surgeries without ever using anything for pain besides Tylenol or Ibuprofen.

So now I am happily caffeinated, headaches under control for the time being, and waiting for Dr. S to squeeze me into her schedule as soon as she can. I should be bearable again soon enough.

• Ok, so I'm not having much fun these days what with The Brain asserting its authority over everything I do. In fact, I'm becoming downright nasty to deal with, and the Amazing Egyptian Dude isn't quite sure what to do with, for, or to me. It's hard to tell which one of us is more deserving of sympathy at this point, LOL! Even in the worst of times, I'm usually not grouchy or negative because I see no sense in making everyone around me miserable, too. But the frequent headaches are taking a toll on me, and I am thinking it's probably time to change my name to Oscar.
• Since I don't really want to be Oscar, it's time to make an appointment with the neurologist. Either I need new meds to deal with an old problem, or I have a new problem that the old meds don't treat. The Amazing Egyptian Dude is insisting that I request another MRI just to make sure that the brain patch is still intact; I, however, am not interested in increasing the likelihood that I will glow in the dark before long from all the radiation. Alien glow or not, it's obvious that something is up, and I need to get it checked.
• The blogosphere is an amazing place. Never in a gazillion years would I have expected such an outpouring of support and encouragement from people whom I've never met! Thom, Rosidah, and Sherlock -- you make my day! Not in a Clint Eastwood way, mind you; I mean in a wholly positive way. Between headaches, when I have a clear enough head, I'll try to catch up with my blog reading and leave comments for everyone. Without fail, I find encouraging comments from one of you and don't feel quite so bad at not having the strength to catch up completely.
• We'll have a guest soon. A niece is coming from Egypt to spend the summer with us. She's a couple of years older than our daughter, has been here twice before, and speaks English well enough that we don't need to babysit her. She'll go between our house and the brother-in-law's house, but I expect that she'll end up staying here more often because we have two spare bedrooms and the in-laws have none.
• I finally rescheduled the surgery to have the right side of my thyroid removed. Lucky for me, it's scheduled for August 27, which means that I have to rethink my vacation plans. I'm supposed to go to Texas so that my aunt, sister, and I can make a road trip to Florida to visit two more aunts. I'm trying to get the surgery moved up and figure that since I had to reschedule it from last November, my surgeon ought to work with me on it. We'll see what happens.

Here's wishing for a mostly headache free day because my To Do list is getting out of control! :)

On Friday, I wrote

And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to watching the new documentaries I got for my birthday, tomorrow my plans include catching up on the laundry, and Sunday, I want to see what happens!

I often wonder how I maintain a sense of optimism, of making plans for things to do in a few days because no matter what I want to do, The Brain has a habit of getting in my way.

The early part of last week was dominated by seizures, those pesky electrical jolts that The Brain uses to let me know who is boss. I should have known that headaches would soon follow, as the two are best buds. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday found me crumpled up on the couch in a feeble attempt to sleep off the pain without much success.

Because I never got headaches in my younger days, I had no way of sympathizing with my friends who did. My attitude was that you take an aspirin or a Tylenol and get on with life. But that was before I experienced one! The Mayo Clinic has an online migraine self-assessment test that I took yesterday, during a period when the headaches were on vacation. Here's my result:

Your answers indicate that you're currently experiencing a severe level of disability as a result of your migraines.
It's important to talk to your doctor about strategies for coping with your migraines. Because your level of disability is severe, it's likely that your doctor will recommend a combination of acute and preventive medications to help you cope. Preventive therapy can help you control migraines before they happen. Acute treatment involves taking medicine to stop the pain as soon as a headache begins.

Yep, been there and done that. I have a cornucopia of medications at my disposal and use them when necessary. Between migraines, ice pick, cluster, and pressure headaches, it's often challenging to determine which medication to take. And because I don't want to rely on the medications, I always start with Ibuprofen. If I catch it early enough, 800mg of Ibuprofen will usually take care of the ice pick, cluster, and pressure headaches, but the darn migraines are a completely different story! For those, I have a pill to take as soon as the pain begins. Most of the time, it works like magic; for the times when it doesn't, I can take a different pill to help bring it under control.

So, despite the plan to watch my new documentaries, catch up with the laundry, and see what exciting things I could do on Sunday, I spent the weekend at war with The Brain. Again.

Way back in the day, I began this blog as way to distract myself from the daily ups and downs of living with a degenerative illness that sometimes knocks me soundly on my butt. It took some time, but it has now become a much enjoyed part of my daily routine -- except on the days when headaches and seizures plague me like they have for most of this week.

I have made a conscious decision to avoid life on the pity pot. In this regard, I am absolutely Stoic. We often associate a lack of emotion with the Stoics, but these guys were far from emotionless; they just chose to avoid emotionalism through the use of logic, reason, and reflection. Like the Stoics, I know that I have no control over Chiari or what it does to me; however, I do have control over how I deal with it. I can make a conscious decision to perch perpetually on the pity pot, or I can choose to plop on the pity pot only as needed and to work with what I have and who I am now to the best of my ability the rest of the time. I nearly always choose the latter.

This past week, however, has seriously tried my determination to avoid feeling sorry for myself. I've had the hurts-to-breathe headaches every single day since Sunday. Thankfully, the medication has helped to bring them under control fairly quickly; however, they are so debilitating that it's hard for me to clear my head of the fog they bring and to focus on tasks. Add seizures, which I had on Tuesday and Wednesday, to the mix, and I become a real mess, really quickly.

To deal with the down time, I've learned to write my meme posts way ahead of time whenever possible and to schedule them to go live on the appropriate days. This makes my blog look like all is peachy keen in my little world, even when I'm curled up in a fetal position on the couch trying desperately to make the world go away. Unfortunately, what I can't do is respond to comments from the couch. And that is the whole purpose behind this post.

Peeps, it's been a miserable week, and I haven't been able to respond with any regularity to your comments. I am truly sorry. I know how important comments are in the blogosphere, really I do, and I appreciate every single one that is left for me. Please don't think that I'm not grateful or that I am ignoring what you have to say; this is not the case. If I don't reply to comments, it's because I'm looking for the toilet paper while I sit on the pity pot or because I'm playing roly-poly on the couch and haven't found a way to uncurl myself and still breathe.

So, here's to the end of the week:

I live with a degenerative and progressive brain condition called an Arnold Chiari Malformation. My Thursday Thirteen for today was inspired by Thom, who didn't realize that I had had brain surgery and dug around here to find out why. Here's a list of 13 facts about ACM.

1. Arnold Chiari Malformation is the medical name for what I like to call a brain fart. In a nutshell, people who have ACM have brains that are too big to fit properly inside their skulls. Although I like to think this is just because we're so doggone smart, medical evidence does not support this hypothesis. Because the brain doesn't fit like it should, the tonsils (foramen magnum) hangs down, outside the cavity of the skull, and into the spinal canal.
2. ACM is a real pain in the butt. . .er, head! The spinal canal is made just big enough to hold the spinal cord so when a protruding piece of brain scoots down in there, life can get really complicated. Things like killer headaches, dizziness, nausea, vertigo, tingling sensations, difficulty swallowing, double vision, difficulty hearing, balance issues, and insomnia are just a few of the symptoms that ACM triggers and that ACM patients deal with on a daily basis.
   
3. Size does not matter with ACM. Some people have very small protrusions and suffer considerable pain, while others may have a larger protrusion and never have a symptom. In my case, a chunk measuring 8 mm -- not really big, but definitely not small -- sits in my spinal canal. If it hadn't been for the fact that I suddenly began having headaches so painful that it hurt to breathe, I would have never known that I had a problem.
   
4. What comes out, can't go back in. If the brain breaks free of the dura mater, the protective membrane that surrounds it, it can never be put back inside. The solution to this problem is surgery. To allieviate the pressure that this piece of brain puts on the spinal cord, decompression surgery, typically composed of three parts (craniectomy, laminectomy, and duraplasty), is the most widely recognized treatment.
   
5. If undiagnosed and treated, ACM can cause paralysis or death. Dr. G, Medical Examiner, part of the Discovery Health Network's programming, had an episode about a young man whose ACM was undiagnosed and who died because the brain protrusion pinched his spinal cord.
   
6. No known cause or cure. Although many physicians believe that ACM is a hereditory problem, there is no definitive proof of it. Nobody in my family has the problem except me, but Julie Carter, a Chiari activist, and all three of her daughters have it. If you're a fan of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you might be familiar with the Carter Family; they received a home makeover from ABC a couple of years ago.
   
7. Classified as a rare disorder by the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). What this means is that ACM affects less than 200,000 people in the U.S. population. Ok, so this just means that I'm special -- I can live with that!
8. I'm a Zipperhead! What's a Zipperhead, you want to know? That's the nickname that Chiari patients call a decompressed Chiarian. After the surgery, the back of your head looks like its been closed with a zipper, and that's where the nickname comes from.
   
9. Getting a diagnosis is not easy. Because ACM triggers so many different and seemingly unrelated symptoms, most ACM patients don't get the proper diagnosis for many years. This was my case. The problem was clearly present in my early teens, but I was shuffled back and forth from the ENT to the family doctor to a gastroenterologist. Back in those days, the MRI was not available and since it is the now the way that most people are diagnosed, I can't blame any of the doctors who treated my symptoms without getting to their root cause. I just had to wait until technology caught up with them.
10. Decompression surgery can alleviate some of the symptoms, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because of #4, surgery doesn't solve the problem; however, it did help to control the symptoms better. After I had surgery, the headaches occurred less frequently, which is good. I still have problems with double-vision, my balance is so bad that my neurologist joked how it's a good thing that I don't drink because I would never pass the standard police drunk test (heel-to-toe walking a straight line), my depth perception is so off that I can't see well enough to walk down a flight of stairs or even a curb without falling, and I have complex-partial seizures that come from the right parietal lobe of my brain. The remaining symptoms may sound bad, but I manage to live a relatively "normal" life with them.
    
11. ACM is more common in women than in men. I like to think that this is just because we're naturally smarter, so our brains are naturally bigger! It's not likely that the medical community supports my findings, though.
    
12. Roseanne Cash, daughter of country music legend Johnny Cash, is also a Zipperhead. She had decompression surgery in December of 2007. Maybe it was ACM that was causing her "Seven Year Ache." Ok, that was a very bad joke!
    
13. ACM is an invisible illness. Because people can't see the piece of brain that hangs out in the spinal canal, they often misjudge a patient's reaction to the symptoms. Our society is trained to look for visible symptoms of an illness -- watery eyes and sneezing for allergies, red bumps for chicken pox, coughing and a stuffy nose for a cold, etc. -- and when none are present, judgment of the patients who suffer from invisible illnesses tends to be rather harsh. Perhaps because my invisible illness involves The Brain, that most sacred of internal organs (muscle just doesn't sound as dramatic here, sorry), I am treated far more kindly than someone who has Lupus, for example. This is just plain wrong!

I hope that my list has enlightened your world. If you want to know more about ACM, my symptoms, or decompression surgery, there are lots of links in my sidebar.

If you'd like to join in on the Thursday Thirteen fun, click here.

I studied Spanish all four years of high school. Senor Munoz (sorry, but I have no clue how to get the proper tilde above the "n"!), who made learning the language fun most of the time, made it a point to teach us songs and phrases that we could begin to use right away no matter how little of the language we had actually mastered. And so, it is with a sense of profound gratitude to Senor Munoz that I shout, for all the world to hear, "Gracias a Dios que hoy es Viernes!" And in English --


What a week this has been. Let me say that again -- what a w---E---E---k!

I haven't had a seizure for two days, so my little world seems to be settling down again. The headaches, however, haven't quite finished reminding me that The Brain is in charge of things no matter what I think. All in all, though, I can't complain too much about The Brain's obsession with electrical surges; it is what it is, and I'll continue to muddle along as usual. So what has made me so thrilled that the end of the work week has come, at last? In a word, students.

If it weren't for the fact that I will soon be a retired educator, this professor is ready to throw in the teaching towel. Yesterday, my students, who have been working on a research paper for four -- count them, folks, FOUR -- weeks, should have had a rough draft of their essays ready for their classmates to read and critique. Between the two classes, no more than a dozen students actually had a draft for their group members to read. Many still hadn't completed the required research and had left their peers in the lurch, as they couldn't write a draft without the research that their group members should have collected and shared.

In all my years of teaching, I have never seen such a blatant lack of consideration for others as I witnessed yesterday. They have all known for four weeks that this assignment requires cooperation with one another and that if one member of the group fails to meet scheduled deadlines, the others suffer. Despite this knowledge, some of them decided that the undue, uncalled for, and unnecessary stress they placed on their group members was simply not as big a deal as their inability to conquer their procrastination habits.

Let's just say that I let them all hear my displeasure with the irresponsible behavior. It didn't help those poor students whose stress levels had risen to new heights, but it just might act as a wakeup call for the inconsiderate and irresponsible.

I may be shouting T.G.I.F. to the world, but I'm still a cockeyed optimist! Amen and Amen.

No smiles today, just frowns I've got.
It's time for a rest on the pity pot.

I'm sad, I'm cranky. It'll be a day or two
Of feeling down, of feeling blue.

This isn't just a simple mood swing,
It's an honest to goodness pity pot thing.

You must admit that I've earned this spot
Right up front on the pity pot.

It's just so hard to keep this smile.
I need a pity pot break for just a while.

So give me time to wallow a bit.
I know real soon that I'll get over it.

The clouds will part and the sun will grow hot,
And I'll jump right off this pity pot.

This morning started out right nicely enough. I woke up early, got everything ready to begin grading essays, and was all set to put the past few days' worth of seizures behind me. I had heard something on the news that I just had to share with the Amazing Egyptian Dude, so I got up from my computer desk and began to amble over toward the living room. Maybe half a dozen steps into the trek, and I'm hit with the headache -- the one that makes breathing painful and moving excruciating. It nearly always starts on the right side, as that's the side of my body that Chiari seems to like torturing the most.

I grabbed my head and wobbled over to the couch, where I collapsed in a groaning heap. Whether my cats can sense something is wrong or they just like me being a captive audience for their affections, I don't know; but just seconds after I got myself situated comfortably on the couch, I had one cat at my head, one on my chest, and another on my feet. I fell asleep that way. See when I get these pressure headaches, the only way to deal with them is to sleep them off. Although I did manage to sleep, I awoke with a headache and a droopy right half of my face. If you've ever seen anyone with Bell's Palsy, then you'll know what I mean by a droopy face.

The headache is gone now, but I am wiped out. I am confident that I've earned this break on the pity pot, and by golly, I'm going to take it!

Life is filled with ironies. Yesterday, while writing my post for Blogging Against Disablism Day, I had a seizure. It was the first of several that plagued me throughout the day. Like always, I did what I could between electrical overloads and the naps that follow them. But by the time the fifth seizure came along, I had had enough. My level of frustration reached the boiling point mostly because I have grading that needs to get done, and it's incredibly difficult to maintain focus on student essays when one's brain is performing the electric slide at regular intervals. Seizures make me craziest if they come when I've got something that I need to finish within a certain time frame, otherwise I deal with them quite well.

By mid-afternoon, I had given up on the notion of grading and returning papers. Feeling completely defeated, I settled into my nest on the couch to read a book that a student had loaned me. Two paragraphs into the text, seizure number six came along and blew the reading fuse. Patience be damned! Whatever it was that had triggered the seizures obviously hadn't gotten any better because my brain was still trying to get my attention.

I still don't know what upset The Brain yesterday, but whatever it was must not be resolved yet because this morning began with a double-header: a headache AND a seizure. You know, I wouldn't mind this crap so much if it made me look as cool as this chameleon!

I've written before about the feeling of running in a hamster wheel and not getting anywhere, especially when it concerns the miserable Chiari headaches that I get more than often than I like. The past few days have involved a lot more running in circles without getting anywhere, and I am intensely frustrated about it.

Sleep, or rather the lack thereof, which is often at the center of the circular dilemma, proved even more elusive this weekend than normal. I played musical beds all weekend long as I tried to find a comfortable position for my neck so that sleeping didn't trigger a headache and wake me up. Fat chance! Whether I built the nest of pillows on the couch, our bed, or the futon in Iman's old room, I simply could not get comfortable enough to sleep longer than 30-40 minutes at a stretch. My neck doesn't usually give trouble, unless the muscles tense up in response to a particularly nasty headache; however, the bones in my neck are now a source of pain on their own. It's a bit freaky to roll my head around in an attempt to loosen up the neck muscles and hear the grinding of bone on bone when I do! The grinding sound gets loud enough that even Ali can hear it. So, I now have to figure out if the pain the neck is the source of the sleeping problem, or if the the sleeping problem is causing the pain in the neck. Wonderful!

Now that the rant / vent is over, I'm going to move on and make a real post, LOL!