Road to Wellville - Part 1

Date this is being written: July 4, 2005. Time: 5:00am
Reason I am up this early: horrible splitting headache, running from the back of my head all the way to the goddamned valve sticking out of my skull (covered in hair, but still sticking out when I touch it, a hard little bump, it disturbs me).

Happy Independence Day. Yesterday, one of the local networks played the Movie Independence Day. I wonder if anyone knew they were off by one day.

I am a touch worried here. My headache is not going away. Since I’ve started this goddamned alternative treatment I have been having headaches every time I have lain down. Since the pain seems to be following the line of the shunt, I must assume the two are somehow related.

So now what? Should I stop the treatment and go back to Budapest to get X-rays and an opinion from my neural surgeon as to what the hell could be causing this pain? I am sure this would be the prudent course of action, but I have no desire to do this. I want my treatment to end. If I keep whining about my head, they will freak out at this clinic and simply stop my treatment. Obviously, this will also happen if I get a stroke, but still, I do not want to stretch out this incredibly unpleasant experience ad-infinitum. In any event, the neural surgeons never find anything. Every time I suffer from pain they run a gamut of tests and then they tell me everything is negative. It is only a year later that the big guy comes back hemming and humming and telling me that I had an obvious case of something bad, at last count, herniated disks.

Still no news on the PET scan front, god only know what they had found, maybe they are waiting for me to finish treatment here before telling me I am going to croak. If my son was getting treatment for herniated disks I would not want to spring such news on him either until after he had completed treatment. Still, I know I will learn of it, somehow.

Not unexpectedly, my sister could not bring my my DVD-s from the States, the box was buried somewhere within the wall of boxes that comprise my life back in the world, in Kathy’s garage. Great. Another two months of Fight Club. This will really help my mental health.

I am astonishingly hungry here. They pretty much starve you. The idea is to deprive you of coffee, all stimulants, alcohol, meat, fruit juice and carbonated beverages in an overarching effort to detoxify your body. You are fed gruel, fresh fruit, steamed vegetables and other unadulterated crap. Does it work? Yes, it does. Being thoroughly addicted to coffee (and probably, a little bit to booze) I suspect at least some of these headache pains are attributable to withdrawal.

They feed you strange concoctions, tinctures, they purge you… During admission they admitted to being sorry for not being allowed to bleed people. You know. Cut them. There is no gazillion dollar spine correctional equipment here, just a lot of people who know how to get rid of my problem with massage, emulsion therapy, acupuncture, physical therapy and other weirdo stuff. They have an astonishing track record of correcting herniated disks and other problems of a similar nature as well. Now that I am reading this over, with the exception of no beer I think the Sarcastrix would absolutely love it here. All she needs to be happy here is a crate load of science fiction and a secret stash of lager.