I’m not really sure where to start this.

I saw the new doctor today. She’s a neurologist and a pain management specialist. I’m not over-stating things when I say that she’s really my last shot at getting this fixed. I’ve gone to 5 neurologists, 2 neurosurgeons and an ear, nose and throat doctor. There’s no one left to see.

I had to wait for a little under an hour for my 2:30 appointment, but I was rewarded with almost 2 hours of one-on-one time with the doctor. She was very kind, she hugged me (side note: I’m not really a hugger), and she started taking a very thorough, if a little scattered, medical history.

She asked me what I was in school for and when I told her she got a funny look on her face. And then she looked and me and said, “I think that’s a bad idea.” It was her belief that I could not be successful at this career with chronic pain. I explained to her my plan and how it was important and my passion and all that, and she just nodded and said she wished I’d consider it. That she really thought that I should quit school.

To say that was discouraging would be a vast understatement.

She moved on. We discussed my pre-surgery headaches and symptoms, my post-surgery symptoms, she looked at a few MRIs and then she did a neurological exam which proved interesting. There are a series of tests where, if positive, point to a problem in the brain or spinal cord. And I had all of them. Yet, as she explained, there appears to be nothing wrong with my brain or spinal cord (well, almost, I’ll get to that shortly).

When we finally went over everything she looked me in the eye and said she didn’t know. It looks like I might have a syrinx in my thoracic spine, but that shouldn’t present itself as these headaches, so while interesting, that’s kind of useless.

She said, in a slightly nicer way, that I am a mess, and that all she could really do was “grasp at straws.” On one level I appreciate her honesty. I’d rather know that you’re stumped than have you pretend like you know what you’re doing when you don’t. On the other hand, fuck. 10 months and still no answer.

I’m not sure how I ended up with that expectation, but somehow I’d gotten it into my head that this would be it. That she would do this history and physical and the answer would lay right before our eyes. That there would be a diagnosis that fit and a treatment that had a good chance of working. That this doctor, this appointment, would be it.

It wasn’t.

She prescribed a medication that scares me. It raises my blood pressure and that should theoretically raise the pressure in my head. And since we’re still assuming that the problem is low brain pressure, it’s sound physiological reasoning.

The scary part is in the the blood pressure part. Blood pressure isn’t something that you really play around with. Our bodies don’t tolerate big changes well and the effects of increased blood pressure can be catastrophic, to put it mildly. And nevermind the fact that it’s almost guaranteed to make me puke in the mornings. Which is obviously something I want to deal with right now.

The thing is, I think this doctor is actually good. I think she’s probably excellent at what she does. It’s me that’s the problem.

I went to a headache clinic and I walked away with straws.

I have had a headache for 10 months that no one, not experts in their fields, not neurosurgeons who have published dozens of papers, not anyone, can understand or treat. This drug may work, it may not. Either way, I’m still walking away with no clear idea of what’s wrong. I can’t take this medication for life, I can’t rely on it to fix all my problems. It’s a patch on a tire that’s blown out. It’s a bandaid on a severed carotid artery.

I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach for the thousandth time. I don’t know how many times I can go to doctors and be told that they don’t know. How many times I can be told that my case it too complicated, that there isn’t an easy answer. I don’t even really need the answer to be easy, just any answer that might actually be correct. I would take any diagnosis, literally ANY one today, if it meant we had a plan, that someone else, anywhere else, had ever been through this and came out the other side.

At this point, I feel so hopeless I can hardly even function. I want to wallow and cry. I want to quit school like the doctor suggested and give up everything. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep fighting. I can’t keep being told there’s no answer. I can’t.

There has to be an answer.

I just don’t think that we’re going to find it.

And now I guess I have to try and make peace with that.

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