Imagine Jenny McCarthy As Your Masseuse, But Like, Not Really

I have to apologize for the serious lack of posts in Ye Ole Famous Last Word(e).  I'd tell you that I was busy dealing with the holidays, with my cluster headaches, with desperation apartment cleanings, with finding a new job (mission accomplished!) and finding my own replacement, but really, I hit a major writer's block and all of the above are just excuses.

I tried to break the spell, truly, I did.  There are 27 different drafted posts in my folder right now, of which three are maybe decent, but I kept opening them up, staring at them, typing a sentence, and then opening up Imgur in a new browser tab instead. 

"Katie," I told myself.  "You need to relax." 

So I did what any other downtrodden urbanite would do: I dialed up my regular masseuse and requested a massage in the immediate future.

Unfortunately, Marcus, former masseuse to the Women's Olympic Soccer team, was not available. 

And thus my trauma begins.

So I made an appointment at a small salon near our apartment and walked over.  I sat myself next to another woman in the reception area and continued A Dance with Dragons until a very small, skinny man with a mustache came out and immediately triggered my NOPE NOPE NOPE alarm.

In case you haven't noticed, my Photoshop skills are slowly but steadily coming along.

 He started looking on the list for his next client. Not me, not me, not me, I thought.

How Not to Reassure a Cynic

As the black Santa Claus who worked at Macy's in December of 1990 can attest, I am an extremely skeptical person.

For the past several months I've been enduring chronic lower back pain. It's nothing close to a demon drilling into my eye, more along the lines of a troublesome imp kicking my lumbar. A gremlin rotating my spinal discs, or perhaps a lesser goblin operating a gondola service through my spinal canal.

The best treatment to chronic lower back pain,  people smarter than me say, is to see a Chiropractor. The cynic inside me was yelling "let me out, I have a family! I'll give you anything!" and also something about chiropractors not being medical doctors. As stubborn of a skeptic as I am, I'm open minded enough to try most anything at least once. Plus my insurance covers it.

Ruminations on This Blog on its 2nd Month Anniversary

Some important and fun facts:

1. People have come to this blog via some of the following google search keywords:

• kegbus average tip
• positive reinforcement
• celebrity with hemochromatosis
• cluster headaches
• guy in empty house
• thefamouslastword.blogspot.com

I admit, I'd be most perplexed about the positive reinforcement, but who googles the address of a blog instead of just typing it in?

2. We have some regular Russian readers.  Zdravstvuj, comrades!  You are my favorite readers.  The rest of you may fight to the death for second place.

3. I have clearly come a long way from my fear of having an internet presence.  Now you all know about my little family of oxygen tanks.

The oldest one I shall call "Oscar."

4.  I've learned a lot in the last two months of blogging.  For instance, things that are conducive to blogging: 

• boredom
• professional ruts 
• wine 
• REVENGE!
• rants by people I do not  like 

Things that are not conducive to blogging: 

• cluster headaches 
• hospitals 
• forced sobriety 
• not being able to look at lights 

I promise a triumphant return to the former.  

Although I may keep Oscar.  He's cuddly.

Suddenly, mobile.

And this year's Halloween costume just creates itself.

All of a sudden, a whole new world opens with this O2 tank.....

For the record, I'm under 30.

Yep, that's the new home oxygen tank.  Complete with 25 feet of tubing for your home oxygen comfort!


Cat: i'm about to go to walgreens and get you some slippers, a house coat and some cigs
oh can you start using motorized carts at stores now!??!

with your tank strapped on to the back!?!?

can i if you wont!?!?

beep beep!

(that's my motorized shopping cart)

Me: omg maybe i can get handicapped parking??

Cat: a handicapped designated driver.

you are the best friend ever!

Today's another day.

So I admit to you all that I have nothing much to post today.  I've been up since 3:30 am with another cluster headache hospital run; I'm at work.  Not quite sure if the head fuzzies are a result of being up since the before-mentioned hour or because my head is still doing weird, cluster-related things.  Oh well.  But I swore something would be posted here everyday, so post I will. 

Katie: my hope is that we can get an oxygen tank in the apartment today so that we can both start getting a good night's sleep

Sal: See if you can also get a tank of helium, too.

Sal: Maybe they have a special

Sal: BOGO, you know?

 

 

 

Cluster Headaches Redux

Further, I did not care for this film.

Reliving the worst experience of your life is never fun.

Catch y'all on the flip side.  Speculation as to my real whereabouts is promptly encouraged.

Cluster Headaches, or A Demon is Drilling Into My Eyeball, or How I Spent My Columbus Day Weekend

In this particular image, the dying natives on the bottom symbolize the left side of my head.  Also, genocide.

This post gets a little long, so I'll wait until you're ready.

Ready?

So last Thursday night I woke up from was electrocuted out of a dead sleep to an incredibly intense pain on the left side of my head, coupled with the feeling that something was savagely twisting my eyeball from the inside.  I stumbled into the bathroom and took two ibuprofen (for only your harshest eyeball twists), and eventually managed to fall back to sleep.

Sometime later-- at what now can be assumed was around 6 am-- I awoke again, this time to the same type of pain, except, if possible, a hundred times worse.  I thrashed around in my bed in agony, unable to control my own body--

Realistic.

--for what felt like forever before I had the strength to get up and take more ibuprofen, which didn't really help.  Eventually I fell back to sleep, but then woke up shortly after to get ready for work.

I thought it was all a dream until I saw the open Costco bottle of ibuprofen on the counter.

Not realistic.

Now, David was gone from Thursday morning until Sunday, first on a religious retreat, and then away to a bachelor party.

Same thing.

So I was left to my own devices.

My left eye felt strained during the day, nothing too severe.  Certainly nothing to prevent me from having some friends over for dinner and to collectively go through "a few" bottles of wine.

What we now know is that alcohol can trigger my particular condition.