physical breakdown?

Things didn’t go so well for me last weekend. On Sunday, Matt and I drove to Atlanta to run some errands. At his house, I went upstairs to check on my roses which had been drying over the previous week or so. Well, all of a sudden, I got this terrible pain in my head. It was a pulsating, throbbing pain in the back of my head (base of my skull) and from temple to temple all along the front… I grabbed my head and first, called to Matt, then I just started crying cause it hurt so bad. He couldn’t understand what was going on, and I certainly had no idea. All I could say was: My brain is hurting! My brain! I told him to call his mom (who’s a nurse but was out of town). She advised that we put ice on my head and go to the hospital… So he got their one ice-pack and a bag of frozen peas and helped me out to the car.

We drove 15 minutes to the nearest emergency room – at a children’s hospital. It took only about 20 minutes for me to be admitted, even though the place was packed. By then, I’d been crying for and hour and a half and I’d gone through who knows how many kleenexes.

After taking my blood pressure twice, taking my temperature twice, and checking my eyes twice, they concluded that it wasn’t anything like an allergic reaction to food or drugs. I remember that I was laying down in the table in a small room… Matt was close by, sitting on a chair, and his brother Mikey was across the room. I know several doctors and nurses came in… Matt took care of my insurance information. Finally, after crying for two hours, the pain began to subside very, very slowly. A man came in with a cart and told me that he was going to give me an IV with some morphine for the pain… I couldn’t look or watch – I have an offical phobia of needles. (in fact, as I type, my hand is hurting where they put it in my hand. it was awful). So, they gave me some morphine and evetually the pain began grow less and less. My head was still pounding and I was keeping ice on the back of my head.

They took me to radiology for a CT scan. After about 30 minutes, they told me that the results were normal – no bleeding in my brain and my brain structure was normal.

So, no answers were given to me… Eventually, the pain went down to the point where I could go back to Matt’s. We decided to stay in Atlanta for the night, just in case. They told me that if the pain was just as bad as before, to go to a regular hospital and get a spinal tap.

They gave me some prescription headache painkillers – they could only describe it as a bad headache since there was nothing else to hint at what the problem was.

Matt took me to the pharmecy where we got my prescription and purchased three more ice packs – for me. Then we rented “Strictly Ballroom” and he bought “Le Divorce” for me. I love that movie and it was wonderful to watch.

That night, I was afraid to go to sleep in a room by myself. The guestbedroom at Matt’s contains a king-sized bed… So I put some pillows in the center of the bed and made him sleep on the other side of them in case I needed him. Don’t worry, folks – I told my mother about it the next day and she was more than happy with the idea – she didn’t want me sleeping alone, either.

The next day I spent sleeping and being lazy – I was greatly exhuasted and I had no energy. Around 8pm, we left his house and decided to return to Southern to try to get on with our lives.

-update to be continued at a later time-