The MRI and the MRA came back absolutely normal, to my extreme distress. I was really hoping they would show some big dramatic thing the neurologist could work off of, but no. She has admitted her failure and now wants to send me to a headache clinic. She says that until I get off the morphine, they won’t be able to see whether any other medication they try really works or not. But when I come off the morphine, regardless, I won’t be able to function for awhile because I’ll be both in headache pain and in withdrawal misery. In a headache clinic, they get you off all your drugs — like in rehab, even with counseling and stuff — and then try to determine the best and least invasive, least chemical-enhanced treatment to reduce the pain and keep you functioning.
Sounds good to me — if the insurance company will allow it. I don’t want to be on morphine forever either. Long-term use of opiates, so they say, will eventually make me stupid, unmotivated and inattentive as well as addicted. There’s a headache clinic in Cleveland with a three-week program. If I go to that one I’ll bring a copy of The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City from the library. It looks fascinating and I’ve made a goal to read it this year, and it’s 936 pages of eight-point print. Perfect book to bring to rehab. Aside from morphine, the best way to deal with my headaches is to distract myself with some conversation or intellectually stimulating reading, and that book looks like a good exercise for my brain.
My anxiety and melancholy over the last several weeks has become obvious to everyone by now. We have to keep a journal for political science where we find political topics from the news and in books and stuff and write what we think about them. My professor was so disturbed by some of the content of my entries that he took them to the campus psychologist. He didn’t mention my name, but I’m already seeing her and she recognized my writings from some of the stuff I said to her, and some things I quoted in both the journal and in therapy sessions. In one journal entry I wrote about the sorry state of the world today and how some days I felt like shooting myself just to get it over with, and in another I said I saw no future for myself or for anyone else. I suppose I was foolish to write those things where someone else could read them.
Anyway, Dr. A asked the psychologist, if, in her professional opinion, was I crazy or suicidal or what. She replied in the negative, and didn’t say I was seeing her because that would violate the privacy laws or something. At least he cares, anyway, and didn’t immediately call 911 and have me kidnapped and thrown in the loony bin without due process, which has happened to me before for saying much less. Today he gave me the psychologist’s card, mumbling something about how maybe she could teach me relaxation techniques to deal with the headaches. He’s a good man. I don’t know whether telling him flat-out that everything that should be done (depression-wise) is being done, would make him feel better, or just make him worry more since that means everything that should be done is not working terribly well.
The Charley Project Blog 