If you have been following my journey since late October (you can catch up on the early days here: A Journey to I Don't Know Where), you know I have been battling severe headaches daily since then. I say battling, because it makes me feel better. For the most part, the headaches are winning.
For nearly eight weeks, I have not been able to read without triggering a headache. My quiet times have been listening to the Bible. I have not been able to concentrate without triggering a headache. I have had to slow down my coaching business. I have had to stop almost all ministry with FCA. I am blessed that the Lee County FCA Director and the Southwest Florida FCA Director have allowed me to focus on my health. Anyone who knows me knows how social I am. For these past 7-1/2 weeks, being around a group of people for even fifteen minutes triggers a headache. Kim can see it in me. She just looks at me and says so no one else can hear, "You don't feel good. Do you?" She and I have been able to get out for an occasional lunch or dinner at a place close to home a few times, but that is it. The vast majority of the days, I have had to take what my neurologist refers to as a rescue med and go to sleep for 90 minutes to 2+ hours in the morning to fight off a headache then often take an anti-nausea medicine and take another hour to 90-minute nap in the late afternoon. I estimate that I have slept well over an extra 150 hours. Meanwhile I have had no problem sleeping at night except when a headache or neck pain wakes me up. I think one of the prescriptions I am taking must cause weight loss, because I have lost nearly 30 pounds. Although I am sure the physical stress of this might have something to do with the weight loss.
I am not writing this just to catch you up. I am writing this, because tomorrow/Monday, besides being Day 54, marks another milestone. At 2:45 pm ET, I will go through a radio frequency ablation on the nerves in my neck at C3, C4, and C5. Using live x-ray, the pain management doctor who has given me two rounds of nerve blocks in my neck over the last four plus weeks will numb the area then insert a needle and an electrode in my neck then heat the nerve to the point that it cannot send pain signals up the right side of my head then repeat the procedure at the other two points. That is the path these headaches, which have been at times debilitating, traveled to start. The previous injections both provided some pain relief and helped us verify the mapping of the nerves associated with these headaches.
It could take as long as three weeks for the ablation to work fully. I could have pain in my neck from the ablation or from muscle spasms for that long too. These procedures work for 80% of the people who get them and provide pain relief for six months and sometimes much longer. Would you please pray that the ablation plus the physical therapy I started for my neck a few weeks back plus the preventative medications I am taking daily for the headaches would make these headaches a rarity so I can return to a regular life, so I relieve Kim, so I can live life with her, so I can serve the coaches and athletes of the schools of western Lee County with FCA, so I can go back to building my coaching practice, so Kim and I can get back to our small group and the ministry that we know God has called us to here in Estero. I know this is a God story. I cannot wait to tell it. I trust him. He is perfect. His timing is perfect.
Regardless of the outcome of the procedure tomorrow, I will praise God. He is worthy. I love him so.
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