I have been getting occipital nerve blocks about once a year for about five years now. Every year when it comes time, I keep wishing that it won’t happen. I visualize that my head is just going to keep being normal and that I will be okay, but it feels like there’s a switch that goes off in my head. I can feel it. My head just changes, and I can tell that the nerve block has worn off. I can’t explain how I know. I guess the best way to explain it is most of the time, I feel like I have a hat on even though there’s no hat on my head. When the nerve block wears off, that feeling of the hat on my head goes away. When that goes away, my pressure headaches get worse. Pressure headaches hurt, but the pain isn’t a normal type of pain. It isn’t a sharp pain or a throbbing pain. Instead, it is just a build up of pressure slowly growing over hours and hours until my head feels like it is caught in a vice. That type of pain is very difficult to recognize until it gets to be so bad that I can’t stand it.
The good part is that I do have one stop-gap solution. If I put pressure on my abdomen, it relieves the pressure on my head. So, during the day, I wear a girdle. It helps, but it isn’t very convenient to wear something that is so difficult to put on and take off.
I want to be able to be thankful, but that’s a struggle. The pressure makes me feel anxious and upset. However, there’s a lesson to be learned in this struggle. Sometimes, I get too much in my head. My faith journey becomes all about the philosophy and spirituality of life. The lesson is that while I am alive I have to find a balance between the mind, body, and spirit. I have a strong spirit and a strong mind, but I have for a long time ignored my body and haven’t given it the respect it deserves. It is an amazing miracle of God as much as anything else He has created. My body is a microcosm of the universe if I just open myself up to see the truth of it. And the lesson that I need to learn is that my body interacts with my mind and spirit all the time. That’s why the pressure can affect my mood, my prayers, my thoughts, and everything else. When I am in pain, nothing else seems to matter. I can imagine physical pain being so bad that I would betray everything just to make it stop. I don’t know if I would be strong enough to endure it. I think that’s why Jesus had to be crucified. He couldn’t just die and rise again. He had to suffer from visible physical pain because that’s something that scares all of us. It’s the one thing that all of us fear because we all know that we have a breaking point. At some point, there’s physical pain that we just can’t endure. It had to be something we all could relate to and something that we all feared.
And so, yes, I am thankful. Every struggle I have makes me understand the sacrifice God made for me and why He made it. Every struggle I face helps me to realize how blessed I am and also what I still need to work on in my understanding my own life.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
