I love askapatient.com

Last year, to continue the "gardening" theme, I, um, exhibited poor judgment. It was a hot day and I was alone with my son, being enthusiastic about outdoor life. At some point, I decided that I needed to climb up on top of the pool house and, with a hand saw, try to trim the oak tree. Not a huge problem. This particular branch, however, was about a foot above my head, and was about six inches in diameter. So there I was (at this point, I start sounding a bit like Arlo Guthrie...), jumping up into the air and at the same time pushing as hard as I could because, heck, sawing UP is a lot harder than sawing DOWN, when I got a crushing headache. A real doozy, as we said in the mountains where I grew up (this is AFTER I grew up on a farm in Minnesota). So, um, I climbed down from the roof as fast as I could, luckily not breaking a limb, walked inside, and put my son in front of a video. This in itself, illustrates that I should have gone to the hospital, incidentally, since I'm not a bit fan of the evil death box (TV to you normal folks.) Then I called my husband, told him that I'd done something, and went to bed. Unusual behavior for a mom of a 5 year old. We don't typically go to bed, leaving our children alone in the house. Yikes. Luckily it was a mighty compelling show and nothing got burned down. At any rate, I ended up with one heck of a migraine. For three weeks. The only thing that worked was to take four ibuprufen's and a couple of tylenols. Every five hours. For three weeks. It was an interesting time. I went to see three doctors (the last was a neurologist, who gave me a MRI - yuck.). Each doctor loaded me up on painkillers. When I would mention these painkillers to people, I would be met with the bizarre response "oooooh, DARVON (or whatever) how cool." This puzzles me. My personal painkiller of choice is ibuprufen because it doesn't make me stupid. I've never really gotten into the stoner mentality, and the concept of codeine as something "nice" is just flat-out wierd in my book. Like, who are these people, anyway? At any rate (I'm almost here). The BEST WEBSITE for me during this time was a little website called www.askapatient.com. Especially since nothing worked. None of the migraine meds that I was given did a THING for this headache - BUT when I tried them, I'd be floored by pain for six hours, while I waited for the drug to get out of my system (at which point I would take some ibuprufen.) www.askapatient.com let me go in and read reviews of meds (like something or other with codeine) BEFORE I took them. Awesome stuff. The site was started by a doctor and I applaud her. The problem? Ah, yes. After the MRI, my neurologist told me that I'd apparently torn the dura covering of my brain. Only a little tiny bit. Kind of like what a weight lifter does during one of those jerk-pulls (or whatever they're called) Nice, huh? Some women turn their legs from wearing high heels. I tear my freaking dura from trying to pull he-man stunts on the top of the pool house. At any rate, it went away after three weeks, but I'm on a strict health program now. Agatha Christie novels. Yup. And finally, at the ripe age of 45, I'm starting to like chocolate!