January - April 2012
The first occipital nerve block worked really well. For about four days. Then the pain came back again, just as bad as ever. That wasn't supposed to happen. Most people go weeks, even months, between ONBs. I got days. I called the neurologist, and she had me come in for another set of injections. Then again, the same problem, where I was flat out again within five days. That really wasn't supposed to happen. So Dr Chehrenama set me up with a schedule of two sets of ONBs a week, one on Monday mornings and one on Thursday mornings, until I started to show some improvement. Having the shots early on Monday meant that I could generally work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, then spend Thursday - Sunday resting and doing nothing. Of course, it wasn't a great plan, but it was the only plan we had. I didn't always make it to work, and some of the days I did go to work I didn't get much done, as moving furniture or toting boxes from one building to the other made the occipital nerve freak out. I always had plenty of paperwork and research and filing to do, though, so I kept myself well busy.
The rest of the time, I spent battling a million other problems. As someone who's dealt with depression for what amounts to my entire life, this kind of hopeless situation threw me off the deep end something terrible. A cycle of seemingly endless pain that never truly got better or went away unless half of my scalp was temporarily paralyzed isn't a great mindset to find one's self in. I'm not a social person, and never have been, but I couldn't go out even if I wanted to; I couldn't go see friends, I couldn't go get a beer after work, I couldn't have date night with Patrick. I found everything painfully exhausting and draining to the point that even talking to Patrick or Mike or Andrew for more than ten minutes completely drained me. Chronic pain isn't something one can simply trudge through - it's a fight every minute of every hour of every day, and it begins to take its toll mentally. I shut myself away more and more.
The physical symptoms weren't helping either. The bilateral pain was something entirely new. It was like double the pleasure, double the fun. I couldn't lie on my back, so I was forever tossing and turning in some vain-ass attempt to find a position that didn't kill my neck or my shoulders. With the bilateral pain, the pain and muscle tightness in my neck and shoulders and upper back also doubled. Dr. Chehrenama recommended specific trigger point injections directly into those muscles to help them relax as well; as with the ONBs, I'd feel relief for a few days, then it'd be back to the same old grind. Then weird, unexplained things started happening. I lost all feeling down my right arm with the exception of my fingers, which constantly tingled. My arm became literally useless; I spent most of my time holding my right arm across my chest with my left arm, almost cradling it. Yay learning to drive with one arm, because I didn't have a choice - I still had to get to appointments and work. Eventually, that feeling returned, but those weeks were indescribably unpleasant.
By about March, Dr Chehrenama felt I'd recovered enough to switch me over to one set of ONBs a week. I wasn't thrilled, but I was becoming more and more able to cope for longer periods. The pain still came back within four or five days, but the pain that did return was slightly less unbearable. The doctor couldn't really give an answer to why the pain was lessening, other than maybe the nerves had had enough time to rest and the muscles/tendons/ligaments/blood vessels had finally relaxed a bit with so much forced rest so that they weren't strangling the inflamed nerve any longer. The nerve could well be inflamed still, but it wasn't being physically constricted anymore. By May, I only had occasional ONBs and trigger point injections as I needed them - once every two-ish weeks.
By the summer, I felt as normal as I thought I was going to. I could slowly start exercising again and having a bit of a social life (well, I mean, as far as I have a social life). I was cautiously hopeful.
But if it happened a second time out of the blue, who was to say it wouldn't happen again?
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