Of heartaches and headaches

One day in March 2014 I got a headache. As I usually do when I get a headache, I took some ibuprofen, but it had no effect. The next day, I got the same headache. The day after, the same headache. After this had continued for a week or two, I went to the student health clinic. While being examined, one question I was asked was whether I was experiencing a lot of stress. I answered that I was very busy working on my PhD thesis, and also that my wife had lung cancer. So I suppose I was experiencing a lot of stress.

As has happened with many chronic pain issues I've experienced, I ended up seeing multiple different doctors, and no definitive cause for the pain was identified, nor was any effective treatment found. Eventually, months later, the headaches just started to bother me less, and eventually mostly went away. Within those months, though, I did at times experience some pretty awful pain.

One day that I remember in particular was April 29. (Other significant events that have occurred on the 29th of April in the years since: Cara's funeral and my first date with EB. Huh.) Cara, my dad, and I went to an Arcade Fire concert at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus. The band encouraged concertgoers to dress up in formal attire or costumes for the dates on that tour, and I fondly remember Cara dressing in this wild getup:

I also fondly remember how much Cara and my dad enjoyed the concert, but the truth was, I had an excruciating headache that evening and it mostly ruined my own ability to enjoy the concert.

There was one good thing that came out of me getting those chronic headaches, though. The multitude of chronic pain issues I've experienced can broadly be divided into two categories: pain related to sports injuries (knee, ankle, and hip) and pain not related to sports injuries (everything else). When the main form of pain I'm experiencing is from the first category, it limits the types and amounts of exercise I can do without the pain getting too bad. When the main form of pain I'm experiencing is from the second category, exercising a lot generally helps me feel better. To help manage my headaches, I started running more, and I ended up running more in the year 2014 than I have in any other year since 2009, which was basically the last year of my serious running career due to an accumulation of multiple injuries. It was still a minuscule amount by my old standards (I ran about 120 miles in the entire year, with my peak for a single month being about 30; in the year 2004 I ran about 2100 miles), but I discovered that even on that relatively tiny volume I could get into pretty good shape. Not able to run nearly as fast as I once had, but able to run faster than the vast majority of participants in a typical road race. Cara had always been my biggest fan and that year, in what would be the last year of her life, she got to see me participate in a 5k road race in which I finished second place the day before my graduation, and then in August during my family's annual Adirondacks vacation in my first and only triathlon. She was very proud of me, as these screenshots from her Facebook attest.

I'm glad I got to do those races and that Cara got to watch me. That might not have happened if I hadn't been suffering from chronic headaches that year. I guess it's one of those "when life gives you lemons" situations.

By the way, one day in December of that year I went for a perfectly ordinary run and for reasons that remain a mystery to me my left hip started hurting a lot, and ever since then I've been able to do practically zero distance running without incurring significant hip pain. I've still been able to enjoy other activities like hiking and riding bikes, but in recent months I gained new motivation to try to work my way toward being able to do some quantity of distance running in the future. The reason for this was that EB's daughter (whose name and images I have been asked to remove from my posts for future privacy concerns, which I understand and respect) and I loved running with each other. Oh my god, it absolutely breaks my heart to think about the excited way she would exclaim, "C'mon, Jeffy!" and take off running...

So what this post has been leading up to is that one night early last week, a very restless night in bed, I suddenly felt a familiar pain in my forehead. I eventually got to sleep. The next morning, the headache returned. And it has every day since. It hasn't gotten into the "excruciating pain" zone (something I hope will continue to be true) but it has been the most irritating physical pain I've experienced in a while, which is unfortunate.

My mom has theorized that my chronic pain issues have been closely related to emotional trauma I've experienced. I have been skeptical of this, because looking over the whole history of chronic pain issues I've experienced, there is no real correlation between the timing of them and the timing of emotionally traumatic events. (There is definitely a connection between emotional and physical pain, in that when you are experiencing both, they feed back onto each other, and your perception of both becomes worse, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the physical pain was initially caused by emotional pain.) For this particular issue, I am now convinced of the causative relationship. I have learned in the last two years that at least some of my pain issues have been related to excess muscle tension. Perhaps this is another case of that, and perhaps a face that is frequently wearing distressed and sad expressions has more muscle tension.

Well, it's another challenge.

There is still part of me when I write things like this that worries I'm trying to throw a pity party for myself and I shouldn't complain so much because I know there are a lot of people who have worse problems in their lives and aren't as visible about them. But it does help me to write about and share these issues. At a very basic level, when I'm intensely focused on writing something, it's a distraction from pain. I also think that working through these issues in writing helps me to better understand what I'm experiencing. And I also think that sharing them with everyone makes me feel less alone.

As well, I'd like to think that it could be good for other people who may be experiencing similar things to read someone else's writing about such experiences. My friend Deena (website/blog here), a wonderful person, is very open about mental health issues she's experienced and continues to experience and is a tremendous advocate for mental health awareness, and I've seen a lot of people express gratitude to her for speaking out. It's not easy to open up like that, and if you aren't able to, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. But if you are able to, I think it's a very good thing to do.