Friday, June 4, 2010

What's that needle doing in my skull?

I'll be fine, just as soon as the stabbing pain in my head stops. It's a familiar pain. I've had it many times over the years, just not recently. It's not a headache. It's also not a sore throat, though my throat hurts too. It's like someone has jabbed a needle in the very top of my head and sent a nerve pain shooting down the back of my skull or the side of my face (it alternates) and into my throat (and then if I swallow, it shoots the pain back up into my head again).

It's not terrible. It comes and goes. Kind of like the throb of a heartbeat, only much, much slower. If I massage the area where the pain comes, it feels better, but I can't massage it all the time. It's just a bother and I want it to stop. Now.

It almost kept me from driving to Sacramento this morning, but I finally accepted that I simply had to get some clothes for the trip and so I went anyway. I hardly noticed the pain while I drove to Catherine's Fat Lady store (I think it's technically called "plus size" instead of "fat lady" but let's be honest here).

And I didn't notice it while I was standing in the dressing room, sweating like a pig in the June heat and trying on clothes.

I actually found two pairs of pants that fit, one blouse that I really liked, and a lightweight knit sweater thing that had been reduced from $50 to $10 and was too good a bargain to pass up.

I noticed the pain again while I was waiting to pay for my purchases.

I tried to pay with my Catherine's credit card, but it had been so long since I'd used it that they didn't even recognize it (as in--the old old cards are pink and this one is SO old that it's brown and nobody could remember seeing a brown card). This told me how long it has been since the last time I went shopping for clothes, because I don't think I have ever bought clothes in a store other than Catherine's. I've ordered sweat pants from a catalog, but that's about it.

I could have paid with my Visa card, of course, but then I'd miss out on the automatic 10% discount you get from using your Catherine's card. Added to the 30% that I got because I have a Catherine's card which allowed me to get a scratcher card that let me know how big an additional discount I got.

Then because the computer was down and they couldn't look back in their old records for my information, they just issued me a new card, which meant I got an additional 15% off for opening an account. Ultimately with all the discounts they kept piling on, my ~$160 worth of purchases cost me $85.

Wincing my way back to the car because the pain was coming in throbs at that point, I drove to the nearest Red Lobster for lunch because I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to get more of those good snow crab legs while I was in the neighborhood. I didn't notice the pain while I was drowning my snow crab in melted butter. I think it was still there, but the pleasure sensation buried it.

Back to the car and turn on my audio book again and back out into traffic. I was stopped at a very long stoplight and looked to my right to see a woman in her car lovin' whatever it was that she was hearing on her radio.


I debated about stopping at Costco, my original plan, because what I really wanted to do was to get home and take an aspirin (which, as it turned out, didn't help anyway because this is more a nerve pain, like a toothache in your head...I guess toothaches are in your head too, aren't they? Duhhh.). But we were running out of doggie treats and one cannot be out of doggie treats! I also thought I would get something easy to fix for dinner so I didn't have to deal with cooking.

I did a quick tour through Costco, getting the treats, and some individual pizzas for Walt to cook for himself, and some cherries for the fruit cravings I've been having (cherries at Costco were $8 for 3 lbs; at my local market they were $4.50 a pound and had been packaged in 3+ pound packages!), then I drove the last leg of the trip, really looking forward to getting everything put away and collapsing in the recliner.

Of course, with six dogs in the house it's never that easy. The chaos starts when the car turns into the driveway. Polly starts that yappy chihuahua bark of hers and Lizzie starts leaping at the door. I hear yip-yip-yip, thud, yip-yip-yip, thud over and over again while I get my keys out. When I open the door there is a flurry of activity. Mom's home! Mom's home! Mom's home!

The babies have now learned about the front door and are forever darting outside as soon as the door is opened and then I either trip over them or start to shut the door on their bodies.

Five of them know that when I come home there are treats to be dished out (the way I keep them all from running outside when the door is opened). This is fine when there are only two, but five bodies leaping at me becomes chaos. It's only a matter of time before Bitsy figures it out too, since her brother already has.

Somehow I managed to get treats dolled out and food put away and I got myself a bowl of cherries (because life is, after all...) and collapsed in the recliner. But four dogs immediately had to get in my lap and Emmy, who is convinced that anything that goes into my mouth belongs to her alternated between trying to take cherries out of my mouth and trying to get them out of the bowl. I don't know what she would have done with a cherry if she HAD succeeded.

I managed to get them distracted with a new toy I'd bought at Costco. One of those long dogs that you see in Petco ads. It only took Polly 30 minutes to start ripping the stuffing out of it, but it was a good 30 minutes and the entertainment value for both the dogs and me was easily worth the $2.50 I paid for it.

Now I just have to cook the individual pizzas so Walt can have dinner (I'm not feeling hungry), feed the dogs, and settle in to watch Russian Ark, the new movie I just got from Netflix, which is about a tour of the Hermitage and which my friend Ron tells me is great if you need a sleeping pill, and hope that the pain finally subsides.

I know from experience that what happens is that the intervals between throbs get less and less and eventually, hopefully by tomorrow, I just don't notice it any more. Like I said, it's a familiar pain that I've had off and on for years, but just not recently.

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