Word Perv

Those were the words out of my neurologist’s mouth: “It most likely not a tumor, your symptoms don’t sound like a tumor,” he said with a slight Indian accent, “but we’ll get an MRI just to be certain.”

I breathed a sigh of mostly-relief, knowing all the scary things people have been suggesting – tumors, aneurysms, multiple sclerosis, etc. are probably NOT the cause of the headaches I’ve been battling every day for about three weeks. Later when I would reiterate this to my friend David he would ponder, “What do tumors sound like anyway? If I had to guess, I’d say they sound like Gilbert Gottfried.” It’s nice to know my friends are always there to support me.

Turns out these lovely little headaches are unusual because they have some symptoms of migraines and some symptoms of tension headaches. My doctor decided to attack them as both, handing me several different kinds of migraine medications to try and writing me a prescription for blood pressure medication (of all things!) if the migraine meds don’t work. Now make no mistake, I don’t have high blood pressure, in fact, with all the running and other exercise I do I’m in very good shape, but it turns out this medication can also help with headaches. So I’ve got a handful of meds to try, and MRI scheduled in two weeks, and follow-up blood work will be done later this week. So in theory, by the time I see my doctor in three weeks, we’ll have some answers, or if nothing else, he’ll be able to positively rule out all the scary things like tumors or brain cancer. Until then I’m continuing to monitor my headaches, which ironically seem to have lessened a bit since going to the doctor, and I’m going to try the medications he gave me even though I’m reluctant to take these. I just don’t like the idea of taking a pill all the time, but then again, having a headache all the time isn’t that much fun either.