wink     ; )

Shadows

Shadows. People who suffer from cluster headaches call the all-day, non-stop extremely minor cluster headaches "shadows". Regarding intensity, they are about as bad as a medium normal headache. But they don't go away, they respond poorly to oxygen (or at least they respond poorly to oxygen in my case), and they have the characteristic pain behind one eyeball.

Right as I was coming into the final two weeks of school, I got my first shadow in 6 months. Shadows often are precursors to full blown clusters. But sometimes they just remain a series of shadows with no serious clusters. That first night I was terrified. I couldn't sleep out of fear that a cluster was immanent and would destroy the remainder of my semester. It had after all been about six months since my last cluster. I was pretty much due.

Luckily, it never progressed to full blown clusters. I've had shadows pretty much every day for two weeks now, which is pretty annoying, but is absolutely nothing compared to clusters. Advil, extra sleep and occasional quiet times were able to keep them under control and amazingly, I was able (thanks to Tree) to get all of those things during Finals. And with any luck, this bout of shadows may restart my clock and I might get another 4-6 months pain free once the shadows are gone.

Thank you God.