Posted 9/23/2013 9:01 AM (GMT 0)
Hi!
So, I've been suffering from chronic pain in my head/scalp area (I hate using the word headache as it is a term people associate with "take a couple of paracetamol and you'll be fine") for over a decade which was gradually worsening to the point of debilitating the last 6/7 years. It's been so severe I've been unable to work for most of that time, I'm 28 almost 29 now and have lost not 1 but 3 promising careers due to an inability to concentrate and fatigue.
During this time my doctors treated me for anxiety/depression and basically assumed that the pain was a figment of my imagination. This can be attributed to the fact that I initially presented with low mood and what I thought was stress due to the pain mainly being towards the rear of my head.
The pain was non conventional and I would get a scratchy, creepy crawly kind of sensation which ran through most areas of my head as well as an almost permanent tension at the back.
Over the years I was given many different anti depressants and anxiolytics which made absolutely no difference to anything apart from making me drowsy. I kept returning to my doctor to suggest that the pain had an organic cause and asked to be checked for potential injuries to my head or neck or an ENT cause as I was consistently stuffed up. They refused. The only referrals I had were to counselling and a private appointment to neurology which I had asked for when I had insurance. The neurology was negative, and the counselling was pretty useless.
Eventually I switched doctors, and they were much more receptive to the idea of my pain being organic in nature and immediately sent me for an x ray of my neck and referred me to physio. Unfortunately the X -ray came back negative and the physio made no difference whatsoever.
I had just about reached the point where I'd given up on finding a cause, and had asked my doctor to give me a better medication to treat the pain. So I was prescribed Pregabalin and referred for pain management last week. The doctor asked me what I thought might be the cause, and I suggested it might be my sinuses as that was pretty much the only thing that hadn't been checked and I still had nasal congestion so she wrote me up a nasal spray just in case.
When I went to pick up these prescriptions, I spotted a box of Breathe Right strips which people use to reduce snoring or to increase athletic performance. I thought this may help my nasal congestion so picked up a box.
The results of using the strips was immediate and AMAZING!
The things that improved: breathing, sleeping, speech (I was a mumbler), athletic performance, swallowing, eyes (which had been dry), mouth, hearing, my whole facial structure. And my head pain has significantly improved although 1 week on still lingering a bit.
Most of these things I had not even thought of as a problem and were 'just me'. I still have to get a proper diagnosis, and subsequently maybe surgery to treat this permanently but I feel almost born again!
However I'm worried that it may take some time to recover psychologically, while I've been in pain my whole personality has changed. I used to be an outgoing, quiet but confident person. I'm now generally paranoid, anxious, grumpy and a bit of a misery guts. My behaviour has been terrible and embarrassing at times. I've lost most of my friends and my libido has also taken a massive hit, having a relationship while I've been in this state has been almost impossible and I haven't had one for a number of years. If my family hadn't supported me I would be dead by now, I contemplated suicide on an almost daily basis but couldn't bring myself to actually do it as I always retained the belief somewhere deep down that I'd be able to recover.
So if anyone has any advice on how I should proceed from here, I'd be really grateful. Thanks for reading!