Spare Me

Spare Me

Please---no more. No more asking:

Are you drinking enough water?

Are you stressed out?

Are you resting enough?

For the ache to go, I'd sleep all day waking only to hydrate.

Please---no more criticisms:

You're high-strung no wonder you have a headache

You were a spoiled child

Hmm, you ARE anal  

You only want attention

For the ache to go, I'd cloister and isolate into zen.

Please---no more prescriptions:

You should do yoga

You should eat organic

You should align your chakras

You should find God

You should exercise more--or not so much

For the ache to go, I'd gulp every 'should,' camp in church, meditate to stupor.

Please---no more armchair psychotherapy:

Think positive

Identify your self-defeating beliefs

Are you mad at your mother?

"Were you abused as a child?" 

For the ache to go, I'd lavish love to Self and more.

Please---to all you doctors:

Don't look at me, your eyes loaded ammunition suspicion

In the ER, don't deem me drug-seeking

In your office, give me more than six minutes 

Dare not assess my 'perfectionism': don't ask about my bowels

In your notes, don't write neurotic

Bite your tongue and forget telling me to take vacation

Dare to be clinician stellar nay extra-ordinary

Do it for yourself, do it for us

Educate your Self.

Please---no more "help"

I've heard it all--

What's more--done it all

Can do little more

Except live, and live some more--

Day by day pregnant with pain.

Nothing easy about it

Please---understand I'm ill-at-ease

Only because I have a dis-ease

In my brain and not my heart

My brain hurts because of my genes

My heart hurts because you blame me

Please---spare me. 

Hope Expensive

Hope Expensive

I hope not for one hundred percent pain-free

Who could imagine such a state

I ask only for: 

Slack here and there

This way and that, bit by bit

Not for months of zero ache 

Not for weeks of free nor for days at a time

Not even one solitary day.

 

I ask only for few hours

So I can breathe

Hours I may lean on, slump tilt toward

Hours to make a plan, follow through and through and not flake 

Only for reliable hours I may rest

Those hours to squeeze droplets of minutes and seconds

Minutes to blow big bubbles juicy

Seconds of sitting stilled hush in my head

All silent whooshing quiet.

I hope not for normal

Only for sleep through the night

Without migraine knocking at 3:30 a.m. knocking my crawl out of bed

Hope only for function in the a.m.

The occasional social hour or premeditated romance in the p.m. 

The impromptu lunch, chill talk all punctuated ease

Light and laugh, giggle and chill 

Not anxiety about ferment and aged this and that.

I hope not to be party girl

Only to accept a wedding invitation here and there

To stay for the dance and song, stare at a movie screen sans ear plugs

Without shielding eyes at lights flicker and glare

To sway through the day some grace and sway, lilt without drug-haze.

I hope not to be career woman ambition one hundred.

Only to eke a wage

I hope not to be meds free for philosophy's sake--

My body no temple

Only to see my client clearly, no fiorinal nor codeine 

Listen to my friend without oxycodone

Make love to my husband, out depakote drain

Play with my niece, no excedrin stimulate in sight

How to still pure virgin when--drugs, drugs and more to the gills?

I hope not for zero ache.

Only for less heavy head, less bowling ball

Instead more cotton candy-like atop my neck

For more mellow stabs and thrusts milder pricks and jabs

For thunderings and hammerings not so relentless

For nausea less gripping

For diarrhea more solid.

I hope not to be like others, those normals

Others who use comb on scalp brush on hair without a care

Unafraid of tenderness and prickly

Others who move freely bob head swaying 

To and fro music and all else joy

How to afford such hope expensive? 

I hope cheaply:

My head no echo no noise no loud, no red inflame

My head whispers shhh and sparkles green lit yellow

Artery smooth sans spasm, face unwhipped, no tearing eye 

What fatter joy?

I Hear Everything

I Hear Everything

No certainty---

Half a dozen pains not of a kind: know not how, when, where, nor why 

Uniform they're not, the aches of my head are their own 

I hear my own ears

I hear dust settle

I hear a feather drop.

One is hammering and bashing to back of my head Bam! 

Electric busting loose gears, iron grinding wanton and then some

Gnawing and all-knowing, hurt chewing snarls from within, spits with spite

Venom-laced cackling and chortling, whipping abandon

Welts blazing rivers down my neck, angry raking scabs scarlet

Secretly silent and isolate, no starlet I

Needing others, seeking only social outlet

My efforts to soothe in vain, meds no main for pain trail

I hear a hair die

I hear a butter fly. 

Two is band elastic squeezing tight

Clinging stainless to forehead and crown alike 

Bony plates squeaking in spirals, scratching and smarting with me shrill 

Serpents slither and splinter, chewing sinew and flesh to rot, acid putrid

Spiders crawling across scalp, worms biting flesh zig zag and slant side to side

Wheels whirring mayhem and straight ahead storm skewering asunder and thunder  

I hear a cloud clear. 

Three is one sided pulsating temple, shoots lightening white

Kneading shoulder, only bitter, no sweet, only sweat

Deeply aching one jaw, one artery swells throbbing 

Swollen tremor more than teats milking

One vein gnarly popping lurid green, no easy feat for skin chocolatey

One eye bursts tearing rheumy, hot as only evil can be, darker than me

One head, one pain, one ache--lashings of mockery, all glee

I hear the sun set.

Four is base of skull cracking and crackling, banging and boring through 

Steel drums echo, battering horns ramming, eating me alive

Neck wringing and writhing, neurons noising stubborn for weeks 

Slushy ice, coldly blue shattering shards glass sticky, shoved up my nose

Poundings pokes and pangs by the feverish dozens, fervently frozen

My head one hundred and one tons 

I hear my heart beat.

Five is days before blood pours off vagina, knifing shiny sharp cuts

Red inside out, violent vicious skewering head, mottled witch-like

Shriek synapses spreading wildfire, phish sans shush nor hush

Vomit stink dank in dark velvet, secret nights of tender 

Wretch retching, cold hurl in toilet, innards twist and churn, no churl I

Knees on tile cold and hard, throat shredded raw in wail, bleaker than black

Havoc in universe, chaos in vertigo, virulent of my stupid beloved hated head 

I hear the stars align.

Six is all calm, then one thousand and one needle pricks piercing to scalp

Pinching only a second or two or a millisecond or three                                      

Too good to be true, too soon to celebrate, foolish girl, silly pipe dreams

Slap-whack rage furious swearing simpleton upside down my head

This time for twenty-six seconds

As in the drooping arc of my head,

I hear a petal wilt. 

I hear ears of other people

I hear my nail grow

I hear honey combed

Then all quiet again for one hour or two or a day or three

Till the next strike and the next, and the time after a blur

My only certainty.

Peninsula Headache/Migraine Support Group

For 2010, I'm forming a support group for those of us who suffer from headache in all its myriad forms, e.g. migraine, chronic daily headache, cluster, carotidynia, etc. It's a safe space to come together, give and receive support; we'll be creating a community  where we identify with each other, without judgment. 
It's often isolating to live with an 'invisible illness,' and an aim of this group is to help you feel understood and empathized with. You can expect to be validated and have your experience be treated as legitimate, rather than minimized or belittled (as many of us have encountered). 
The group is free, and all are welcome, regardless of your treatment protocol: preventive medications, pain killers, alternative remedies, lifestyle management, or a combination of these. 
The format is free-flowing, and will vary each meeting, with no set agenda: we'll collaborate on what our needs are, depending on how we're feeling (physically and emotionally). You may attend once or be a "regular," you may choose to share your story and your Self, or feel free to simply sit quietly and absorb. 
I hope you'll join us!
For more information on the group, please click on links below:


http://www.meetup.com/The-Peninsula-Headache-Migraine-Support-Group/


My Psychotherapy Website:
www.drranjanpatel.com