Well, I officially have the first day of graduate school under my belt. And with that, my first (few!) homework assignments.

For one of my courses, I had to take an online test called the Real Age test. It’s a fairly popular online test that takes your personal information: age, diet, exercise, health, habits, relationship, etc and tells you what your “real” age is, in relation to your biological age. Personally, I think it’s kind of crap. But I did it anyways.

In fact, I did it on Saturday night when I had one of the very worst headaches of my entire life. And as the questions about health and diet came streaming in (and a few about stress, you know, because I don’t have ANY OF THAT), I knew that I was going to end up with a “real” age of like 50.

I was amazed when I got my results. 23.4 years old. A nice 2.8 years younger than my biological age.

And then I started looking through the results.

I got to one section, regarding my health and my headaches and was appalled at what I saw. They had asked me a few questions about my health and when I checked that I had frequent headaches, they asked about treatment. And when I answered that I was not on any medications that were making a difference and actually had “chronic pain” this is what they decided I needed to know…

Headaches and migraines are no fun, but you don’t have to just live with the pain.

First, fuck you Real Age. I’m sorry, but you are a fucking moron. And I have half a mind to write a SCATHING email to these people. I don’t have to just live with the pain? Then what the hell should I do? As if I’m just here, twiddling my thumbs, living in pain for shits and giggles? Like I wouldn’t walk to the end of the earth and back to make it stop? Like I haven’t tried? Like I wouldn’t freaking LOVE to live without pain? Seriously, my mind boggles at this.

But there’s more…

Chronic pain is bad for your physical and mental health. Get treatment sooner rather than later.

IS IT? WHO KNEW? You mean, being in pain every day is NOT good for me? Well why didn’t you say so? I mean, if I’d known that, I’d just have sought treatment. How stupid of me. Man, maybe the chronic pain that I should’ve just sought treatment for is compromising my mental abilities too.

If I seem angry, it’s because I am. It’s because I am in very real pain, that nothing helps with and I finally got all my ducks in a row for a neurology appointment and now I have to wait until October 1st. OCTOBER FIRST. That’s five weeks from Wednesday. It seems PERFECTLY reasonable that I should have to wait 37 days for an appointment when I’ve had a headache for 23 continuous days already. And, you know, since the headache has come with dizziness and one sided weakness it probably doesn’t really need early treatment. We can totally just deal with whatever damage might be happening right this very second in 5 weeks.

I mean, what could possibly be a problem with this scenario?

I really will try to bring the funny back again (beginning with the story of the second day of train calamities…), but it will probably be peppered with frustration, just as it is now. I’m sorry for that. It’s just sort of a glimpse into my life. I can keep a happy facade up for a while, but it eventually begins to crack and there’s nothing left but ranting.

And cake. Lots of ranting and cake.

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