Close Call
For over two years now I have been being tortured by near daily migraine headaches. It has truly sucked a great deal of the life out of me. I have been scooped off the floor of my daughter's school bathroom - vomiting and delivered to the ER. I have had nerve blocking agents injected into my neck several times in hopes of paralyzing the nerve that sends the messages of pain to my brain.
I lost a lot of time - and a lot of life to these excruciating headaches. The weekend before a close friend died in a fire was totally consumed by these headaches. He called me the day before he died and said he thought he would have heard from me - all I could do was tell him I was layed out flat in bed throwing up. That was my last contact with him. I am so saddened that precious time was lost because I couldn't live and enjoy my life with my family and friends. Life is fast and fleeting - so it is a terrible waste to lose time to headaches. I tried so many medications and nothing seemed to work. I searched the internet in vain for some kind of solution. I was desperate. My daughter had started to complain of headaches too - though not nearly as bad as mine. I worried that she had inherited this terrible curse. (I have had migraine headaches since childhood.)
During a recent vacation day spent at home, my furnace completely broke down. The repairman came out that day and rather grim- faced told me he needed to show me something. He showed me the heat exchanger had three very large gaping holes in it. He asked if anyone had been complaining of headaches in the house. "Are you kidding I exclaimed - I've been brutalized by them for the past two years or so."
He told me I was lucky to be alive. My furnace had been pumping pure carbon monoxide directly into the house - likely for 2 to 3 years. That day was the first full day of my really being in the house an entire night and day in a very, very long time so it was a good thing that the furnace completely broke down or I would likely have died because of the steady and constant exposure to the carbon monoxide.
Wow! We are lucky to be alive. In retrospect I think I know why I did survive this chronic exposure. I always turn my heat off or way, way down during the day in order to save money. I spend a LOT of time at my sister's house on weekends, so my exposure up until that day had been limited to the time I turned the heat back on when I got home after work - to when I left for work the next morning. The headaches always came in the middle of the night. Even my cat had been affected - she licked all her fur off and was going bald on a very large area of her body. The vet didn't know why - thought she might be anxious about something. I figure she likely had kitty headaches!
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