La baasa fih

Just got back from the tabib and atypical neuralgia it is. I got a change of medication which I am actually very excited about. Tabib sez that Topamax won’t have as many side-effects as the Neurontin did, so I hopefully won’t be sleepy, spacy and spazzy. At least not beyond my usual self, he he.

So what do you do with neuralgia? I asked my doc, he said that I’m supposed to take Topamax in increasing doses until the pain goes away. Then I taper down until the pain comes back. Then they put it a little bit up again until they find the perfect level of medication for me, how long I’ll be on that I don’t really know. I could just stop taking medication, and although the pain wouldn’t be too terribly severe, it would be constant and the constant pain made me irritable and emotionally unstable. And plus I couldn’t concentrate and I was getting snippy.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, neuralgia. It’s what happens when the plastic on the outside of an electrical wire gets melted off, and then the bare wire touches another wire and there’s sparks and maybe a short circuit. The 12th cranial nerve has lost its bright-red plastic cover. So my head has a wiring problem. No problem. :) I was sitting in the waiting room for Neurology, which also happens to be the waiting room for Chemotherapy. A door in the Chemotherapy section was opened and in that one instant I saw a young woman wearing a baseball cap and wiping her eyes. See, that’s a problem.

And yet, God promised that no one will get a test they can’t pass, a burden they can’t bear. So the real problem with sickness is not in getting sick, it’s in losing patience or faith. Not that a headache can do that to me. I’m just praying for the girl in the baseball cap. She looked my age.

posted by Abez @ 10/23/2004 03:06:00 PM