Only after disaster can we be resurrected

It's always nice to have someone around to make you laugh. And I mean really laugh.

My day began with the realization that I had forgotten my work laptop at home, tucked away in its rather stylish bag. I realized this as I walked across the parking lot outside the office, and seconds later I came to the conclusion that going back was not an option.

Work continued as a total clusterfuck. FUBAR. It crescendoed in the afternoon, with a meeting where I wanted nothing more than to storm out of there and go home. Angry emails will be written, and I'll be told to forget what has been and look ahead instead. I won't. I don't forget things like that. They take root and grow into a twisted tree covered in nasty thorns that keep lacerating my mind. OK, a bit over-dramatic and gothy there, but whatever. Close to the truth, anyway.

We're a very fast and adaptable company, yes we are, but we totally suck at learning from past mistakes. Suck-didely-uck. I am determined to at least let people know that they made the same decision twice and because of it we be fucked. Which will be seen as unacceptable. Which means I'll have to make some sense of a lot of things that don't make sense, launch it regardless of whether it makes sense or not, and proverbially tape it all up with proverbial duct tape to keep it from proverbially going all Titanic on me.

If Mah Girl hadn't been around (digitally, that is) earlier in the day to make me laugh, I may just have gone postal.

And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
- Narrator, Fight Club

Won't happen though. I'm Swedish. I'd much rather internalize all those feelings and bitch about them here. Plus, I don't wear Oxford cloth. Ever.

So I was at work, chipping away at my inbox and trying to figure out how to send my old laptop back to the company that handles our IT stuff, when my girl, otherwise occupied with Word Twist, suddenly realized that the TV was playing something that might be worthwhile looking at. “There's a cave with something egg-like in there, and a guy walking in to investigate”. Now, as you all should know, walking into a cave where there are egg-like things is never a good idea. Have we learned nothing else, this we should know.

Dan realized the litter box was overflowing. Again.

Then came what might be the funniest thing I've ever read on MSN.

“...and now he died”. I laughed so hard I cried. Co-workers looked at me with a “he's cracking, he's cracking” kind of panic in their eyes. I laughed so hard I lost my breath. Yes, yes, I was, and still am, really tired, but still. It was funny, huh?

Here's the story, if you care:
The story begins with a team of astronaut miners who complete a daring space expedition and embark on their journey home. But by the time the craft returns to Earth, their commander has gone insane. Three years later, a link between the mystery of the commander's madness and a series of bizarre disappearances in San Francisco brings archeologist Lloyd Walker and entomologist Marianne Winters into conflict with police and government officials who have been taken over by aliens masquerading as humans.

Ooooh. [ begin irony ] Intriguing. [ end irony ]

Later, I fled work, went and got myself vaccinated for my trip this fall, and then came home to “pizza-smörgåsar”, which I can't even begin to translate, and chocolatey snacks. Happy happy joy joy. Now I've reached some semblance of normalcy, and might just go and shoot some Nazis before I go sleep. A good ending to a crap day.

The only real difference between medicine and poison is the dose....and intent

I started a new drug on Monday. It's not that the old stuff wasn't working, it just wasn't working well enough. The Headache has reared it's ugly head enough times over the two and a half years it's been around this time, that it seemed like a good idea. My neurologist (grown-up points, right there) pointed me to something that's only recently been deemed effective against neuropathic headaches. See, we're learning new words today, children.

I've slowly increased the dosage of the new stuff, pills that are so small I'm not even sure I've swallowed them until I let my tongue go a-wandering inside my mouth, while decreasing the dosage of Neurontin. So far, so good. No flare-ups yet. I'm only down to five Neurontin pills though, so there's still some way to go. Here's hoping.

Pills aren't really my thing. Up until six years ago, I couldn't even swallow pills, really. I was one of those people that ask their doctor for medicine in liquid form. I've always been like that. When I was seven and had pneumonia my mom ground up the antibiotics in ice cream. I didn't eat vanilla ice cream for a while after that...

Yet another thing Mah Girl has taught me. She's kept the calendar page where she wrote “Martin lost his pill virginity”.

Still, pills aren't really my thing. I hesitate before I even take Ibuprofen for a regular headache. Eating ten pills a day, which I did at one point this week, was excruciating. And not because I have a problem swallowing them anymore, just that I don't like eating pills.

I think it comes down to being a control freak. Having to pop pills meaning suffering from something I can't control. Which annoys the hell out of me. But I like being a control freak. It's sort of comforting. A damp blanket of borderline derangement that I like to wrap around my mind. Mmm, comfy.

Every head has its own headache

For a few years now I’ve suffered periods of chronic headaches (I know chronic is supposed to be “all the time”, and as such it can’t be periodical, but I don’t know how else to describe it). When it first happened, I had no idea what it was. My right eye got all bloodshot, and I had severe stabbing pains just slightly above and in front of my right temple.

I spent an afternoon at the emergency room, watching an endless parade of old men holding the hands of their dying wives, drug users zonked out of their minds and screaming incoherently, car crash victims, and so on. It was horrible and emotionally draining.

Finally some med student barely out of Anatomy 101 found the time to meet me, had me stand on one leg, made me touch the tip of my nose with my eyes closed, brushed my face with a feather, etc. At first they thought I had Horton’s, which is sometimes called “the suicide headache”.

After being bounced around between a few doctors, I finally ended up with a neurologist at Huddinge hospital, who is part of a team that work exclusively with headaches. The final diagnosis is that I have SUNCT (I’ve learned what the acronym stands for – Short-lasting, Unilateral, Neuralgiform headache attacks with Conjunctival injection and Tearing – but have yet to say it in full while drunk).

SUNCT manifests in a variety of ways. Some people suffer a few hours of attacks and then never feel it again, and some have it all their lives and no drugs help.

I don't like the drugs, but the drugs like me

For me it was periods of attacks, about two months at a time with dozens, sometimes up to a hundred short stabbing attacks every day. I had problems sleeping, couldn’t watch TV for a long time or sit by the computer. I read books, took walks. Cooked a lot. My neurologist prescribed me a few different drugs, before we tried Neurontin. It’s normally used as an enhancer drug for epileptics, when their regular meds can’t do the trick, but also has documented results for various kinds of nerve pains. Such as mine.

For a glorious list of possible side effects and such, go here.

The last time the attacks started was January of 2007. They still haven’t stopped. 19 months and counting. Whoop-de-fucking-do. I eat pills three times a day, at 08:00, 15:00 and 22:00, seven pills in total. 3+2+2.

I’ve had them for so long now that the headache feels like an integral part of me. Which is just sad. The pills go with me everywhere.

Today, while Googling around for Neurontin info I found out that it’s been linked to a couple of suicides in the States. At first I wrote this off as The Land of Law Suits nonsense, until I found this. For a few minutes I seriously considered not eating my pills tonight. Until I read the whole article. A 0.43 percent increase in suicidality. Ehm…hardly something to worry about. I hope.