I have had a revelation. Truth. And prepare yourself because it’s a good one. Are you ready?
When one is staying in the hospital after having recently discovered that one is suffering from a rather painful condition, one should not be allowed access to the mobile internet at 4am.
Are you ready for my second revelation? (I may have been gone a while but when I come back I do it with style!)
On 29 September I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH) the main symptom of which is frequent (read daily), throbbing, splitting headaches which have thrice so far been so bad that I was sure there was no way I could survive them.
These headaches are caused by having too much Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) which presses rather uncomfortably on the brain, and combined with the nausea and the almost constant badly blurred vision (which makes it hard to read and makes me too sacred to drive) this condition has so far not been a great deal of fun.
I will tell you all my diagnosis and hospitalization drama another time because at the moment I’m trying to make a point about modern technology…
Which is that sometimes it’s not a good thing.
Being that IIH most commonly occurs in overweight 30 year old women, of which I am one, this morning when I awoke at 4am (thankfully not, as yesterday, with a screaming headache, but rather because I’m on the respiratory ward and all 3 of my wardmates SNORE) I decided to Google whether losing weight would cure me (although I’ve already lost 35 pounds this year). Because if the internet told me losing weight would cure me I would stop eating immediately, no matter how ill-advised.
Google-ing IIH is something I have thus far not allowed myself to do.
For good reason.
The first link I clicked on lead me to a page of a support forumn. Ok. I can get on board with this… Right? A support community is a good thing. Right?
Well yes, of course, I’m sure I’ll be grateful in the long run. But when I’ve only just discovered this morning at 4am that there are people who have been suffering for YEARS with no measurable decline of their symptoms despite various treatments? Well, no, I’m not entirely pleased.
Did you hear me say YEARS?
So my conclusion is that modern technology is rubbish. And that, even if I didn’t wake with a headache, by now I can feel one coming on. And, now that Google has planted the word YEARS in my (slightly squashed, let’s be honest) brain, I doubt if I shall ever sleep again.
Signing off from the incredibly noisy annex of Ward 3B at Crosshouse Hospital,
xo
A
