Monday, April 6, 2009

Worst Headache of My Life

Somehow, in the course of our medical education, we've come to associate the words "worst headache of my life" with "subarachnoid hemorrhage." I can't imagine it's pathognomonic since it sounds like such a subjective phrase for a patient to say, but if you ever see it on a test, don't even bother reading the rest of the question. The answer is subarachnoid hemorrhage. And if it isn't, the question writer obviously didn't know what he was doing.

You see what the problem is, right? Up until you get your SH, there must have been some other headache that was the worst headache of your life. And who's to tell someone with cluster headaches or metastatic brain cancer that his or her heachache isn't nearly bad enough for the big time?

Migraines, huh? Quit yer bitchin'. As least your brain didn't EXPLODE.

I had the worst headache of my life a couple days ago. I've been fighting something nasty for the past several days, and I swear I wanted rip my head off just so it could suffer alone, away from the rest of my body, which had more important things to do like lift weights and watch trashy TV. But alas, I confined myself to my quarantine chamber (aka my room) to suffer quietly and study for my upcoming exams, like a dying pigeon... who studies. And as I read about such wonders of life like septic shock and glioblastoma multiforme, a brain cancer with a dismal prognosis, I realized things could be a whole lot worse. At least my brain wasn't bleeding into itself, which was good, though it was a bit disconcerting that I could hear the pulsating turbulence of my cranial vessels a little too loudly.

I felt a whole lot better this morning, just in time for my three horrendous exams crammed into 3.5 headache-inducing hours.

I forgot to mention that there was this other time when I also had the worst headache of my life. I was descending from the summit of Mt. Kenya, and my headache was so bad that I died a little with every step, and I'm pretty sure I about overdosed on painkillers that day, to little relief. I think I just had a touch of high altitude cerebral edema that day.

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