Letter to my Family: Diagnosis Part 1

the Following is a Letter I wrote to my mom, Karen, and Karen's mom on October 16th 2004. with footnotes.

Then = Blue
Now = Green

Well ladies, brace yourself...

A while back I went to the doctor and when asked whats wrong I basicly went into bullshit mode. "Are you depressed?" Nope, happy as a clam. "Whats wrong?" just some mild headaches and a pinch of acid reflex, etc...

But I realized that this wasn't going to help me with the dooming feelings, BAD headaches, Horrid stomache issues, etc... so like I outlined to Deb(my mother in law), and my mom before. im going to write down what is illing me so that the ladies i live with, and my mom can truely understand whats wrong so that maybe I will be able to do somthing about it, alone or with help.

Before we get started I want to apolagize ahead of time for my poor spelling and grammer...(all of which Ive left in the original letter to illustrate that flaw as well.)

first on the list are my headaches. ive been having them since before I went to AZ which I think was around the 4th grade. I remever the first one quite vividly. Im sitting in grandmas basment on innes ave. I was using an old coffee table as a Desk, cutting up pappers making toy space ships and such with paper when around my eyes start to tingle and it feels like ice picks are being jabbed into my temples. at that time they werent very frenquint. around the 6th and 7th grade they were almost non-stop but the bad ones only hit about once a month. now I have them about once a week. symptoms are always the same. Face tingles around my eyes and mouth, an hour or so later im in a full blown migrane. sound is bad and light is unbearable. after 2-8 hours I vomet once or twice and like that the headache is gone.

Along with my headaches(the constant ones), I feel hot, not like its hot outside hot more like hot to the touch or feverish which gets better or worse depending on the mild headaches at the time. the worse the headache the hotter I feel. on a side note severl people over the past 10+ years have all said that I dont feel hot to them. all in my head maybe? well on a side note when my "mild headaches" get nearly as bad as a full blown migrane a cool shower is all I need to feel better in most cases.


Now that I look back that is total gibberish. I will try to explain the last part in a way that is easier to understand and thanks to FireFox spell checker easier to read.

I have Migraines about once a week. these are intense and cause all of my senses to be over active and cause me great pain. the only thing that helps is locking myself in a pitch black room with no noise.

I also have mild headaches that are 24/7. these are dull Tension headache that has the added symptom of feeling feverish. Cool showers work on two fronts. Showers are calming, and the cool water makes the feverish feeling dissipate.