I almost died, seriously

I think my brain had the stomach flu on Tuesday. I felt it retching in my skull -- the dry heaves, retch, retch, blah -- over and over again. I told Jerod I felt like I was burning from the inside out and he put his hand on my head and said, "You don't feel hot."

I've had migraines -- this was a different kind of torture. The pain started behind my eyeballs and shot down my spine into my arms and legs and returned to my head. I gutted it out for a couple of hours and finally screamed for Jerod to take me to the doctor, who would certainly give me something to stop the pain. 

There I went being optimistic again -- big mistake, huge.

I sat in the doctor's office with Jerod and Ashlyn for an hour and twenty minutes. The nurses took blood -- so I got poked with needles. They made me pee in a cup -- so I got to stumble around the bathroom shared by hundreds of patients with shaky hands -- yee haw, urine. 

They shone lights in my eyes, and knocked around on my head, "Does it hurt when I do this? How about this? Does it hurt more on this side or this side?"

"How would you rate this headache on a scale of one to 10?"

"Ten," I grumbled. "It's right up there with child birth."

And it was -- no exaggeration -- I welcomed death.

"That's very alarming," the doctor said.

I was still hopeful that she'd do or say something constructive about the pain that brought me to her, but no -- she told me to take an Aspirin when my headache subsided. She also told me to monitor my fever and go to ER right away for a spinal tap if it spiked any higher. Then she wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic just in case I was suffering from a sinus infection.

"Give it a couple days," she said. "If you're still feeling symptoms go ahead and have this filled."

That's when Jerod broke into song, "This is spinal tap ..."

The doctor told me to go home and sleep, which I'd already explained was impossible because of my headache. That's what brought me to her office in the first place -- I couldn't sleep through the pain and was contemplating death by any means possible.

"Go ahead and take an Excedrin or whatever you normally take for headaches if you must."

I wanted to cry, and there Jerod was singing about spinal taps and cheering because the athletic director at Washington State University finally fired the 9 (wins) and 40 (losses) football coach, who should never have been hired in the first place. But I didn't care about football at that precise moment -- I was still reeling from the pain in my head.

Doctors hand out pain pills to Jerod like candy. All's I get is a rainy-day prescription for some antibiotics and instructions to the hospital in case I need a spinal tap. 

Well, I munched on Excedrin all day until I read the dosage instructions, "WARNING: Serious liver damage may occur. Do not exceed 2 tablets in 24 hours."

"That's f***ing fabulous," I said.

"What?" Jerod inquired.

"Oh, nothing. I'll just die from liver failure. At least my headache's gone."