Thank you all for the outpouring of support and encouragement about my blog and writing and well just me being me.

The comments here and on Facebook, emails….well, everywhere…I was overwhelmed by the love!

I’m sorry I haven’t posted before now….I’ve had some bad and ugly days recently….there’s been come good and pretty times in there too, maybe not whole days, but I’ll take it!!

First right before I went to the appointment I’m about to talk about, I broke my pinky toe.  Yep, I mean within the hour before, I caught my toe on my nightstand and OUCH!!  I saw stars and everything.  Pretty little stars.  *snort*  It’s been a while now…it is still slightly sore, but it has all healed, finally!!  It did mess up walking on my hip a bit though….same leg.  But I didn’t fall!!  Good thing!!!

I was very excited the beginning of June I saw a new neurologist here in Charlotte.  She runs the Carolinas Headache Clinic in Matthews, NC…so it really isn’t in Charlotte, but it is so close it may as well be.  The first appointment I had with her she spent over 2 1/2 hours with me.  I don’t know if that is her normal time for a new patient or not.  I know she sets aside a longer appointment for a new patient, but I was also her last patient for the day so she took her time.  She gave me a very thorough exam and we talked at length about my medical history.  She was very interested.  I was very impressed.  I love my neurologist at Duke, who also specializes in headache pain (my doctor at Duke recommended this doctor, they know each other well).

As much as I have loved my doctor at Duke, I think this doctor will be able to really concentrate on me more.  She won’t be so over whelmed with all the influx of patients from the system at Duke.  (I hope that makes sense)  The doctor here is very interested in my Chronic Persistent Daily Headaches.  (I have a headache all the time, it ranges from about a 3-5 on a scale of 0-10 pain scale, I have had this headache since I was 11 years old, right after my first migraine)  She believes if we can break this headache then we can break the migraines and cluster headaches.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

She started me on a new medication, it was to hopefully help with the daily pain of my head and my all over pain.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked.  However, I don’t think we can judge it fairly.  I am on a drug called Limbrel, this helps with inflammation and I had problems getting my prescription for over a month.  (long story short…the doctor faxed in the prescription but the pharmacy said they never got it…this happened over and over, finally they got it straight…why it took so long, well I have no idea, but I finally have it!  3 months worth, thank goodness.  I had no idea how much this was helping my joints and all over pain, I was having trouble typing my joints in one of my hands were hurting so much.)

The past month has been filled with the worst migraines.  Let me give you a little run down….Out of the last 25 days I’ve had 22 migraines, 1 cluster headache, and 15 attacks of vertigo.  On July 2nd a vertigo attack started around 3pm and lasted until after 3pm on July 3rd.  (July 2nd was my birthday…I will just have to celebrate 364 Un-birthdays!!  Want to have a Mad Hatter Tea Party with me??)

Can you guess why I haven’t been posting?  Or reading my dear friend’s blogs?

I admit the depression took hold of me and jerked me around a bit.  I think I had some reasons, even if I didn’t have Bipolar I disorder, but I admit my emotions do go a bit extreme because of my illness.  The demons didn’t knock on the door, they busted it down!  For a while there I thought I was lost.  I was drowning, big time.  I was having panic attacks, heck I’m still having a few of those.  I’ve been having trouble going out of the house again for few of having attacks.  I hadn’t been doing my mindfulness practice…except during vertigo attacks, and sometimes not then, sometimes I would completely freak out.  (however, I’m relieved to say that most of my vertigo attacks have been mild, by that I mean slow rotation, they haven’t been rapid spinning….but I won’t go into detail about what they were like.  Just know they aren’t as scary. However, I will just say….they are exhausting.)

I’ve been trying hard to pull myself out of the depression.  The odd thing about this, the medication that the neurologist put me on is actually an antidepressant.  I was really hoping it would help with this too.  However, I think the fact that I was in a lot of pain, and had so many headaches and vertigo when the medication I was taking was supposed to be helping…well this was making me more depressed.  Makes sense right?  Plus I have a few other things going on in life that are stressing me out too.

Recently I’ve been diving into my mindfulness studies again, and trying to meditate.  Meditation doesn’t fix things, but it just makes me be here.  I was so caught up in the fact that I was in pain, that is where I was, I was hurting, angry, sad, scared, did I mention angry…oh you would not believe the anger that was popping up!  wow!  I hate it for Stuart the past few weeks.  At least he couldn’t hear the even more snappy things I was saying in my head.  ewww.

So, I’m focusing on just being here.  I’m taking a lot of deep breaths, and I’m just trying to be me.

On a different note….I’m in physical therapy now to help my hip get a bit stronger and have more range of motion.  I have a day in the gym one day a week and a day in the pool one day a week.  The pool is wonderful.  However, I’ve had to miss a few sessions because of the pesky vertigo.  The last PT session, the therapist really showed me that I am not as strong as I thought I was, she kicked my butt!!  Whew!  However, I’m afraid that the new exercises that I have been doing have aggravated the back injury.  I have been in so much pain.  The sciatic nerve has been shouting at me.  It’s not just yelling on my left side now, it’s screaming on both sides.  I’ll talk to her at my next session tomorrow.  I may have to go see the spine doc again.

Well….I can’t think of much more to say today.

I don’t know if I’ve covered good, bad, ugly…and a little pretty, or not.   But there is some of all in my life.

Good….focusing more on mindfulness again.

Bad….vertigo, migraines, back pain…being really mad there for a while.

Ugly…umm, vertigo sometimes, and you don’t want to see my face when she’s kicking my butt in PT.  hahaha

Pretty….My new headache doctor, she’s really pretty – but not as pretty as my Physical Therapist, oh my!  The feelings I get from both my new headache doc and my PT.