Tomorrow marks a week since the frigging lumbar puncture of doom.

4 cc’s of CSF have been sent to a laboratory with a few vials of blood and tomorrow we get to find out what, if anything, those samples will tell us. This scares the bejeesus out of me. There are a bunch of things that are being tested, and hey, as usual, none of them are good. Chances are, nothing will show up, and that’s what we want. I mean, we want diagnoses, but no good can come of pathology from one’s cerebrospinal fluid. Just, no.

Since the LP, I haven’t been able to be upright for more than 2 hours. Period. I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried. But usually within 30 minutes the pain starts to climb from the back of my head, over the top and into my eye balls. I can tolerate it for a while, but not long. Not long enough.

(In case I haven’t explained this well yet, the headache is the result of having a hole in my spinal cord covering (dura) from the LP. I have fluid leaking out of it and that makes the spinal cord lining like a deflated bag around my spinal cord and connected to my brain (more or less, I’m simplifying a lot). When I stand up, the deflated bag pulls on my brain and nerves and stuff and causes a bitch load of pain. It blows goats.)

Tomorrow I have to call my neurologist and get lab reports and discuss some options because things are just not changing. I wanted to stick this spinal headache out and manage it on my own, but it’s not happening. Nothing’s changing. I’m getting used to the pain, it’s not getting better. I’ve done everything that the neurologist’s office recommended: lay flat, drink caffeine, increase fluid intake, increase salt intake, no-doze, everything. And I’ve gotten no where.

The last option is called and epidural blood patch. I don’t want it, but it seems like the only option left. I know it’ll probably help, I know it’ll probably speed the recovery, but dudes, I am tired of this crap. Of all of it. Of diagnoses and complications. Of needles and lab reports. I am tired. I want to be able to deal with something myself. I want a tiny little shred of control over my battered and broken body and…I just don’t have it.

I don’t have control. I don’t have a choice. The only real option left is to admit defeat.

To ask for help.

God, I hate this.

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