Friday, March 31, 2006, 08:38 AM - Random Thoughts
Back when I was in college, I weighed a lean, mean 165 pounds and had a trim 31" waist. Now that I'm middle-aged, I weigh 205 and have a 38" waist. Ugh! But I decided to *do* something about it. I joined a gym.
I've been working out three times per week at the gym (2.25 miles on treadmill and some weight lifting) and I also do a 2-mile brisk walk around the neighborhood 1-2 times per week. I cut out all junk food, and I've been limiting my calories to about 1900 per day. I've been doing this for three months straight.
I don't understand why I haven't lost any weight. Now, I *have* reaped other benefits: my physical endurance has increased a lot (I used to jog at 4 MPH, and now I can do 5.5 MPH), I sleep better at night, and I don't feel fatigued during the day. I don't crave unhealthy foods anymore. My resting pulse rate is 64, down from 76. I've been able to cut my coffee consumption in half. And my clinical depression has definitely been kept in check. Finally, those cluster headaches I get every other year that lasts 30-45 days only lasted 6 days this time around. So this is quite an accomplishment.
I just don't understand why I can't get any *slimmer* when it's pretty obvious that my health is improving in so many other ways. I wonder what I'm doing wrong? It's not the end of the world, but it is somewhat frustrating.
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( 3 / 1461 )Monday, March 27, 2006, 05:17 PM - Random Thoughts
About every two years I seem to get treated to six weeks of excruciating pain in the form of cluster headaches. Personally, I think calling this affliction a “headache” is about as much of an understatement as calling a high speed head-on car accident a “bump”. The clever nickname for cluster headaches is “suicide headaches” because the pain is so intense that it really does drive people to suicide.
For me, a cluster headache always starts the same way. It feels like there is a small knot of tissue at the very top of my nasal cavity that seems to get inflamed and then starts hurting. It sends a spike of pain into my right eye and into the teeth on the right side of my head. Then the pain spreads to my cheek and temple, then finally to the back of my neck. It takes about ten minutes to go from “no pain” to “world of hurt”.
To understand how bad the pain is, consider this: as much as a migraine hurts more than an ordinary headache, a cluster headache hurts more than a migraine by the same order of magnitude. And the headache lasts 12-18 hours at time and cycles for 4-6 weeks.
There’s only one medicine, Imatrex, that helps. It’s not a perfect pain reliever (but it makes it tolerable) and it’s both dangerous and expensive ($21/tablet).
The curious thing this time around is that my head is hurting in all the same places as a cluster headache hurts, but the pain is a lot less intense this time. On the one hand, I’m glad that it’s not giving me agony. On the other hand, I wonder what’s changed.
Maybe it won’t be so bad this time.
The last time, it was so bad that it would just make me curl into a ball and scream into a pillow.
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