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?

For the past few days, I've been in a funk. The health insurance issue is eating away at me, worrying me far more than I am used to worrying about anything. For the preservation of my mental health, I strive to follow a basic tenet of Stoicism. In a nutshell, the Stoics argue that our misery stems from the fact that we focus our energy on the things that happen to us, things over which we often have little or no control, instead of shifting our energy to reacting to the things that happen because we do have control over our own behavior. For example, I had no control over whether or not I would get Chiari, I just did. However, I can control how I react to having it; I can choose to sit on the pity pot and make everyone around me as miserable as I often am, or I can deal with the situation, do what I can when I can, and go on with my life. But this worry about health insurance is a tough one to work with! I've done everything that I can at this point and now must wait to see what happens.

I don't usually linger on the pity pot and hope that I'll soon be able to pull myelf out of the funk. Maybe it's time to look for a new hobby?

"You're not eating anything," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed.

"I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?"

"I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla.

"Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were in the depths of despair?"

"No, I didn't."

"Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right up in your throat and you can't swallow anything, not even if it was a chocolate caramel. I had one chocolate caramel once two years ago and it was simply delicious. I've often dreamed since then that I had a lot of chocolate caramels, but I always wake up just when I'm going to eat them. I do hope you won't be offended because I can't eat. Everything is extremely nice, but still I cannot eat."

Quoted from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Ever since I was a kid and my mom gave the first Anne of Green Gables book to me to read, I've loved the feisty red-headed orphan and the Cuthbert siblings, Matthew and Marilla, who care for her. Anne has been a kindred spirit of mine for ages and for the past several days, the episode quoted above has haunted my memory.

Like Anne, I know what it means to wallow in the depths of despair. I don't allow it to happen very often simply because it's a nasty place to be, but every now and then, circumstances will work so visciously against me that the depths of despair move from the fictional to the real world. That's where I am now.

The constant coughing has triggered more headaches than I could possibly count. As if I already don't have a hard time sleeping, the coughing and headaches are making it even more difficult to sleep. How pathetic is it that I took an extra dose of prescription cough syrup just so that I might be able to sleep without disruption for a couple of hours? Or to wake up just about every hour with a headache so painful that breathing is difficult?

I really don't want to languish in this place very long, but it's becoming harder to escape from it. Despair and self-pity don't suit me very well because they are shackles that strip me of the freedom to remember how blessed I am that my situation isn't worse like it could be.

So for now, I will play Scarlett O'Hara and sign off with, "Tomorrow is another day!"

Sometimes I think that if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Where's Rodney Dangerfield when you really need him?

I was supposed to have surgery last Tuesday morning to remove the right half of my thyroid because it has a growth on it. But over the weekend, the Chiari decided to give me some serious grief and sent me to Urgent Care for a check-up. Last Monday morning, my surgeon called to ask if I had an infection anywhere because my white blood count (WBC) was elevated from the 8-9,000 norm to 16,000. I felt fine and had no clue where an infection could be.

Add insult to injury here. While my WBC is elevated, the Pheonytin (Dilantin) level, which is always lower than it should be anyway, is at 1.2 instead of the lowly 14 that it normally is. Of course that means a greater risk for seizures. Dr. Oz asked if I would be okay with having the surgery performed under a local instead of a general anesthesia, and I said that I would. Makes no difference to me to be honest. With that settled, I was instructed to show up at the hospital between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning, prepared to get my blood drawn and tested again. Sounded fair to me, so I agreed.

Not two hours after speaking with the surgeon, I got a call from the surgery scheduling staff who told me that although I was scheduled for the morning, I may not have surgery at all if the WBC is still elevated. Not wanting to hang around the hospital all day only to be told that I still had an infection, I asked to do the blood work right away. After all, how much could change between late afternoon on Monday and early morning Tuesday? Turns out that was a smart move on my part -- the second blood test showed that the WBC was still elevated to a level with which the surgeon was uncomfortable. So no surgery for me until we can figure out where the infection is.

On Thursday morning, as I am doing the Thanksgiving cooking, I start to feel the signs of a cold. By the afternoon, it was obvious that a cold was what had elevated the WBC. I felt terrible and ended up not eating or enjoying the Thanksgiving dinner I had cooked. Totally sucks!

Colds and Chiari simply don't get along well together. Sneezing and coughing trigger some of the nastiest headaches a person could ever get and because all the gunk was tightly packed in my chest, I was coughing like mad with no results. Add to this a seriously stuffy and running nose that led to sneezing, and I was doomed to live in the land of the headaches for a while. To make matters worse, colds are caused by viruses and do not respond to antibiotics. This means that I had to fight it on my own.

It wasn't until Monday afternoon that I realized nothing was improving and that I should probably seek medical attention. Four prescriptions and a handful of diagnoses later, none of which mentioned a cold, I am left dealing with the residuals of the dreaded Chiari Cough.

I'm not one to sit on the pity pot over Chiari, but this past week has really tested my patience and ability to deal with it effectively. I think I need some toilet paper because this pot is becoming quite comfortable.