Best of luck, Alameida. My only relevant anecdote is about the friend of mine from grad school who had mysterious out-of-the-blue migraines for weeks that just stopped one day for no reason, which I suppose isn't helpful.
That all sounds absolutely awful. I hope you get some lasting relief soon. (I'd originally written "permanent" but didn't want you to think I was on Team Japanophile Suicide.)
I'm so sorry you're in pain (and really annoyed that it's keeping you off the internet. Not just here: your fans at your other blog are asking plaintively about you in their comments.)
Have you tried web browsing with a Kindle?
The longhand thing pleases me well.
I've heard that the trigger point injection things work pretty well. This was from a client who gets them at a specialty pin clinic.
Also, there's a reason that topamax is called stupamax.
Corny pharmacy humor:
A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor's office. "Is it true," she wanted to know, "that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?"
"'Yes, I'm afraid so,"' the doctor told her.
There was a moment of silence
... before the senior lady replied,
"I'm wondering, then, just how serious is my condition
because this prescription is marked
'NO REFILLS'."
I feel like this is a trap. If we type more comments, then alameida reads more comments and her head hurts.
Perhaps you could just imagine that my comments are in a soothing font and pleasant color.
Yikes, Al, poor you. You can say dumb things to me, and I'll assume I'm the one whose being dense.
alameida! You've been missed.
Here's hoping the pain goes away soon.
And, while I realize not being able to comment on the internet is probably not so high up on the list of bad things about serious pain, maybe something like a Kindle would be more tolerable since its screen isn't backlit?
al obviously needs an amanuensis to read the Internet to her and take down her replies while she is on her fainting couch. Ideally one who can do lots of different voices, allowing easy distinguishing of commenters. (Please imagine this being read in the calm, authoritative voice of Patrick Stewart).
I thought their wireless connection was just to amazon's bookstore...
Does amazon still pay all the monthly wireless fees?
If so, I might look into this thing.
Sounds horrible. Not wishing to be one of those unasked-for advice people, but I happened to be asking a friend today if her migraines, which erupted for the first time at age 40, had stayed away. They have. The big stress /juggling / conflict thing had diminished in her life which is the main thing but she said a bite guard was a big help while it was still going on.
Good luck al. Have fun in the real/non-internet world.
I like the amanuensis idea, and am now imagining the amanuensis' secret blog.
Wishing you a speedy recovery. Am curious in that you're still funny, though complaining of stupidity. Are they from different sources; did you labor long for us; contrariwise, have you all along been shielding us from the full blast of your glory?
Best wishes, Al. Also, the post title made me happy.
Finally, Jesus Christ on a Jarlsburg-covered Wheatable this Topamax is making me a moron. I can't remember what I'm saying from one moment to the next
I've been experiencing some memory problems myself. Although now that I've run out of Percocets and am steadily diminishing my legacy supply of Vicodin, that may not be an issue much longer. I feel like I'm turning into a caricature of a little old Jewish man though: "Nu, if you don't have your health, you have nothing!"
It's clunky, but yes, the Kindle has a web browser, no extra charge. Unfogged is very well suited to it.
Feeling for you, al. Here's to better living through chemistry.
one of my grandfathers deeded us this wisdom: Sex is overrated, pissing is underrated.
24: Yeah, but could he orgasm 7 times in a single session?
[25 should not be read as expressing aught but the most heartfelt sympathy with alameida's plight. Get well soon!]
Damn, alameida, that sucks. The medication list is rather splendid in a way, though. Lyrica! Eletriptan!
25 No, but by his age he could piss seven times in an hour.
On the OP, Christ. I've known plenty of people who suffer from migraines, but yours sound worse than any I've heard of. Hope things work. Also, could no more commenters get nasty health shit. Almeida, Natilo, are enough.
I came to tip my hat to the post's title, but Blandings beat me. (My 9th-grade school pic features a sideways haircut.)
Good luck al! I just got off my Topamax after 5 weeks at full doseage proved to be completely ineffective for me. The stupid-making power of 'Dopymax' is indeed impressive. I also had other weird side-effects, like getting brain-zaps, and having my senses slip out of sync with each other. No fun.
Hopefully it will treat you better and actually kill the migraine.
Have you tried Indomethacin on the off chance that the headache is Hemicrania Continua (one sided, loooooong lasting, migraine-like headache)?
and having my senses slip out of sync with each other.
Whoa.
Only for a second (or less) at a time, but it would happen numerous times per day. It was really freaking weird to experience in an entirely unpleasant way. 'Whoa' indeed.
30: I wanted to YouTube link, but I'm on an iPad in the car. Look up, " Where the Hell Is Bill?" by Camper van Beethoven.
I'll comment while you're asleep. Hope it works out this time.
Bob: please call me racist and explain stuff you learned about Japanese ritual suicide from movies that makes you OG.
1) Racist. You're welcome.
2) Japanese woman of a certain class were given a suicide dagger, tanto or kaiken, as part of their dowry essentially to use as circumstances and their honor demanded. Of course usually to avoid rape or capture, but also more rarely to kill a rival or husband (or go Medea) or to shame the ie. IOW, women were given much more latitude and independence in this area, as opposed to men's suicide decision being massively socialized, constrained (it was rarely optional, and a strong anti-social statement if not commanded or expected) and extremely ritualized after Sengoku. I am not sure why you and your sister have attached yourselves to such a patriarchal institution.
3) Current reading:
Primary:Scot Nygren: Time Frames:Japanese Cinema and the Unfolding of History...extreme critical theory
Perhaps no one, however, has contributed more to this rethinking of Chinese writing than Thomas Lamarre, in his Uncovering the Heian: An Archeology of Sensation and Inscription (2000). Lamarre necessarily engages a double project. On the one hand, he has extended Deleuzian concepts to complicate modern understanding of early Japanese writing. He argues that translations of Heian literature into modern Japanese conform to ideological norms of phonocentrism and repress complex visual effects simultaneously active in the Heian texts. On the other hand, he also traces the reciprocal relationship in the nineteenth century of phonocentric reforms with nationalism, so that an ethnolinguistic unity becomes both imaginable and foundational for formation of the modern state. One implication of his work is that the privileging of spoken language is bound up with nationalist ideologies of romantic identification, ethnic homogeneity, and discursive closure. Cinema as a visual medium does not simply escape these hegemonic operations, since the ideological reduction of camera images to classical transparency reproduces the same effects. However, the radical potential of writing systems from kanji to cinema, by way of the visual materiality of the text, opens onto the world of heterogeneity and différance.
Along wth the Nygren, I also have the Lamarre mentioned above open and Frellesvig A History of the Japanese Language
Almost finished Cambridge Japanese History v 4, halfway through Banaji on agrarian labor formations, and the Corey Robin, although I may toss that garbage.
For light relief, finally doing the John Dower Embracng Defeat. I don't have to recommend a Pulitzer winner.
And I hope you headache gets better.
Corey Robin:
The twentieth century, it's often said, taught us a simple lesson about politics: of all the motivations for political action, none is as lethal as ideology. The lust for money may be distasteful, the desire for power ignoble, but neither will drive its devotees to the criminal excess of an idea on the march. Whether the cause is the working class or a master race, ideology leads to the graveyard.
Simple apologetics for technocratic neo-liberalism. Boogeymandering. Tossed.
I did like Joseph Femia Against the Masses and Pareto's Political Philosophy for their analysis of conservatism and illiberalism. Much fairer, and more useful, from a scholar rather than a journalist. Femia is recommended.
27: Maybe the rosy-toed one could write a catalogue of medications with deep meanings based on the origin of the various drugs and their names.
That's awful, Al. Yeah, I was concerned about your sudden complete absence. I'm hoping the docs come up with something that both works on the headaches and is tolerable for you.
bob, that was particularly awesome; thank you. thanks for all the well-wishes from everyone; I just woke up and am utilizing cheating time while I have my first coffee and oxycontin. have to say, magical oxy's very effective in not getting me high but relieving pain, and I am not super-itchy or anything. I guess they put a lot of work into the time release factor but, hey, it works great, I'm happy. the topamax, yeah, it doesn't make me globally stupid, it makes me have aphasia, like a stroke victim who is otherwise fine. I do have to proof-read very carefully because I can't spell and will substitute words which rhyme with the desired word but are way apart on the keyboard. and when talking I will get to the place where the absent word is and then, irritated, fully describe it until someone tells me. and I just forget things all the time but this is more like operating one one hour of sleep constantly than it is like being stupid, I think.
37: If you're tossing Corey Robin after that quote, I'm pretty sure you're not reading the "it's often said" in the spirit he intends it.
Further to 41, Robin is a scholar, not a journalist, and his current FB status is about how John Stuart Mill liked John Brown so what the fuck is up with liberals who back away from him. Really, bob, get back in there, Corey's good stuff.
Further further, he once tried to help me get a jobin a hotel so I could organize from the inside, but I somehow fucked up the job interview.
43: you didn't emphasize your ninja training enough. you were going to be how they got into the vault.
as long as I'm being counter-productive, has anything happened I should know about? has sifu driven anyone from the blog in his role as bullying enforcer which we all passively accept/rely on because of our bourgeois acceptance of capitalism?! he has to do that periodically to police the boundaries of our discourse and make sure no true radicalism enters and pops the swipple bubble we live in, you know. has flippanter alluded in a gentlemanly way as to whether one might have reached third base with lunchy, or is she off the scene? how is natilo feeling? shitty, I assume, from the above. feel better soon! fill me in, y'inz. briefly, in a soothing font, which my husband will read aloud to me (really!!)
he doesn't have enough voices to do everyone, though.
as long as I'm being counter-productive, has anything happened I should know about?
Well, we did have a long thread about the sexual mores of rural South Carolina...
Seriously, we did. Your presence was sorely missed for that one.
flippanter has indicated that lunchy is leaving clothes at his place. He has probably disclosed more, but he drops tidbits into random threads, so there is no way for a sporadic reader like me to know if I'm caught up to date on the flippanter-lunchy going-ons.
I hope this lifts soon, al. Also, I too am pleased by the longhand.
lunchy also made him by fruits and vegetables.
Here's Comrade..sorry...Citizen Robin demonstrating his right-deviationist ideological insufficiency. Bob, you're such a maverick.
lunchy also made him by fruits and vegetables.
He's a pod person?
31: Have you tried Indomethacin
I've been prescribed that a few times now for my gout. As with other NSAIDs, I feel like you have to be very good at knowing your ground state to be able to tell whether it is working, because you don't have a whole bunch of side-effects to remind you that you've taken it. It does seem to work a little better than naproxen sodium (Aleve) for the gout.
Going back to the doctor (not my doctor, as he is on vacation this week) today to see about heavier-duty treatment options, as this has been going on way too long. Also, my goddamn wrists are starting to hurt from using the crutches.
mrrr. just briefly checking in and I see natilo feeling crappy. sorry! feel better soon! it does sound as if they need to treat the illness more aggressively if you're still in so much pain. don't be stoic. tell yourself you're going to put on a brief, one-man play in which you pretend to be in serious pain, and try to act like that. clutch your temples, let your head hang limply from its fastening at the neck, wince, draw your breath in audibly, that sort of thing. I more or less never do any of these things, but it seems a rational course of action. that's it, I'm audi 5000.
The DE was a polite stoic. She managed to get all sorts of things ignored until they were more serious than they should have been. It's a bad patient/doc technique.