The first of the bonecrusher headaches I remember. I was … eleven or fifteen. I lie on the couch paralyzed with the pain, just not moving or talking or even opening my eyes. Going in to the pain instead of trying to find a way to make it go. I remember thinking I’d had them before, just never that bad. I knew that stress was a part of the cause, and that stress would have been my father.

I think I drifted off and woke clammy with sweat, but almost free of the pain. Just the lingering inflammation and sensitivity.

As far as I know they’re not migraines, because those have certain symptoms that I don’t experience.

In early adulthood I don’t remember them happening as much, but I was self-medicating more or less constantly, which might have affected both the headaches themselves, and my memory.

Later on they happened often. At some point I switched from Excedrin to naproxen, because the latter was supposed to relax muscles, and that seemed central. These days it works divinely sometimes, and other times not so much.

Pretty consistently there are tensions in the tummy as well. Too much tightness, or less often the reverse.

There have been a lot more stresses than usual the last two-plus years. I’m holding it in my left shoulder mainly. Also my calves even more than usual, and that can lead (the last 18 months or so especially) to tinglefoot.

What’s been normal this last semester or two is to get hit during the part of the week that involves performant lecturing, the primary source of stress these days.

Tonight after a very early and too-short run of sleep, after all the posing and preaching was over, I got hit again belatedly. It’s relatively rare for it to happen that way. Usually the exultation of being done with it leaves me happy and healthy.

The tentative good news is that all the lecturing is done with for the summer. There’s plenty of work left, but not that part.

I don’t have to worry about it for three months, and there also isn’t any giant necessary project threatening to make me crazy, like the moving thing last year.

So I’ll be very interested to watch my body closely and see how it responds.

There will be less pain probably. And I can do science on what remains. I have a lot of different kinds of cures to give trial to well beyond the small cold blue pills.