Abandon All Hope...

  ...ye who enter here.

  I start every doctor's appointment with the expectation that nothing helpful will happen--I try to remember to hope for the best but to always expect the worst. Considering the number of appointments I've had that haven't produced any results, it's not surprising that I have this attitude. It's the only way to continue going to the doctor when you've been going for half your life, and no appreciable progress has been made. In fact, my headaches are getting worse.

  So it was surprising to me how disappointed I was after visiting my headache specialist recently. You don't really think about it unless you suffer from one of the myriad of chronic disorders, but eventually you change doctors. You exhaust the knowledge of the doctor you're with, and you have to find a new one. Or the doctor you're with retires, or moves to another state, or some other situation arises in which you can no longer visit your previous doctor. This doctor is one I've been with for years--practically since reaching adulthood. He's been with me through it all, and it's taken until this past year for him to run out of ideas. I'm probably his toughest case. Nothing works for me.

  I'm used to disappointment when it comes to medications. Why it suddenly hit me this time when I learned long ago not to hope for anything, I don't know. Maybe it's because my doctor finally admitted that he's out of ideas. The only thing he can think of is constant, low doses of painkillers. I'd prefer to stay away from that route, as that's how people become addicted to various painkilling medication. In fact, I ration my painkillers very carefully. It took me a year to finish one bottle of a popular extra strength prescription painkiller. Despite being told I could take the painkiller two days a week, I made 30 pills last 12 months. I'd rather be in pain than addicted.

  There is a bit of hope--my doctor will be attending a neurology conference in June. He'll be asking around to see if any other doctors have suggestions on what else to try. If that doesn't work, he'll help me vet clinical trials to see if anything will work. He already suggested another TENS unit that might help more than my Cefaly, or that might help more if used in conjunction with the Cefaly. Unfortunately, it's currently extremely expensive. In the meantime, I'm going to wrestle with the disappointment of another three months of uncontrolled migraine pain with no treatment in sight.