Alora Fane

Another extremely disturbed night last night; insomnia waking me into a vortex of frantic fretting about shifting symptoms that led to me pacing around my kitchen for an hour at 2am... So I'm writing about it again to hopefully find some relief.

This is awful, in case you couldn't tell from the multiple posts I've written about it over the past week. The symptoms come and go and change; I was having a strange pressure feeling on my head, then I got nauseous, then felt slightly feverish, the back of my neck - where I have a brain surgery scar - started hurting, last night and now it's like a constant pressure around my whole head... When I'm distracted enough, they fade, but the anxiety seems to invade my dreams and cause not-quite-but-almost-panic-attacks when I'm vulnerable, starting the day on a terrible note.

I try to control the symptoms and frenzied thoughts when this happens by doing progressive muscle relaxations, controlling my breathing, lying with my limbs spread out, listening to a guided meditation on youtube for getting back to sleep or relieving anxiety... but results are varied. It's worked a few times and I've been able to drift off again after an hour or so, but last night the changed-again head feelings were so hard to ignore that I had to get out of bed and try to do something... I paced around my kitchen for an hour, drinking some 'sleepy tea' in the hopes that'd help (I did fall asleep afterwards, but woke up again a couple of hours later needing the toilet, so that was great).

My next scan is on the 24th. 12 days from now. I'm counting the days at this point. I've been trying to google stuff that might give me reassurance that these symptoms aren't indicative of a new episode of brain horror, but all the articles have to add "but it might be a brain tumour so you should get it checked out to be sure". Feels like anyone I could possibly talk to would say the same thing too - "you should get it checked out to be safe" - because, well, obviously. And I know that! I'd love to! But I have to wait, and it's torture.

Thankfully I keep this blog, in which I've mentioned my various brain issues many a time. I think I talked about this in my last post a couple of days ago - I can't even remember, my mind's such a mess due to lack of sleep and panic - though I think that was just about one post from late November where I'd mentioned similar brain worries, though I haven't had another scan since then so it could just mean I've had these new issues since then.

I've looked again through all my posts with the Brain tag. In order from most recent first:

∞ This is the post I looked at last time ∞, from 4 months ago. I mostly talked (probably more than I should, looking back) about personal relationship/friendship-related issues and loneliness. I also mentioned physical concerns:

I've also had some digestive issues - like persistent nausea, but not any changes in what wonderful stuff I'm grotesquely expelling out of any orifices - which is something I had a few years ago too.

...

But of course this leads down a path of worry about it being physical issues with the brain, since oh-so-wonderfully nausea is also commonly associated with brain tumours. And I literally do have a brain tumour, and there's a very real chance it could be getting worse.

I've also been getting headaches, stabbing ones, in the same place every time: the top left side of my head, just above the temple. Google tells me headaches that stab out of nowhere but only last a few seconds are called 'ice pick headaches', and they're not uncommon or a cause for particular concern... but of course every medical article you ever see online also includes "YES BUT IT COULD BE IMMINENT DEATH CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR RIGHT THIS SECOND", so... bleh.

I'm also noticing now that I currently have a pressure feeling on the top of my head. This, the nausea, and headaches are all things I've experienced in the past... but I also had a literal undiagnosed brain tumour in the past, and untreated hydrocephalus, so they were actual signs of something worse back then.

These are much the same symptoms as I've been having recently, again at a time of particular stress due to what I need to do next for work (always feels weird calling what I do that), the COVID vaccine, etc. I haven't had a scan since I wrote that, but those symptoms did eventually completely disappear.

I think ∞ this post from 7 months ago ∞ was the last time I had a scan:

I'm going to be having another brain scan tomorrow, so I suppose that's another thing that feels like a disruption that'd be hard to work around. I was meant to be having them regularly, every month or so, but the minor inconvenience that was a catastrophic global pandemic sort of got in the way a bit there. So it's been months since my last checkup, and I'm not looking forward to this one for a couple of reasons. One is that lying completely still in an MRI scanner for half an hour is very much a test of mental discipline because I constantly have to fight off panic attacks, and I'm concerned that it's been so long since the last one that all the practice and desensitisation I had from regular scans might have faded at least a bit. Another is that it might find that the tumour's started growing again, and then what? Would that be it? I don't even want to think about it, but there's a non-zero-percent chance of that outcome, which of course my neurotic demons tell me must mean it's 100% likely.

Apparently it was unremarkable though; I don't seem to have mentioned the results in a post at all. They probably came back clean, then; I don't even remember.

∞ 10 months ago was another period of high stress ∞ where I was having 'hacking' issues with my site, and trying to figure out how to get MARDEK on Steam. I also said this:

So many annoyances... On a personal note, I've been having head issues recently too, which I suspect - and hope - is due to stress, spending all my time at this computer, and poor sleep... rather than my brain cancer stuff. I keep waking up at like 4am and can't get back to sleep, so the past few days I've just been getting up around that time instead. Did you know that depression can cause insomnia, and insomnia can cause depressive moods? Isn't that useful to know?? I had sleep issues following the brain surgery, so I can't help but wonder whether I'm struggling with sleep because of literal brain damage, but there's enough other crappy lifestyle stuff that could easily point to the same thing that it's probably just something mundane. Annoying though.

Doesn't that sound familiar??

A year ago, I wrote two posts a week apart mostly about COVID stuff. It's been going on for so long, that thing! In the ∞ oldest one, where I wrote some weird stuff about looking after a dog or something ∞, I said:

I'm more concerned about some worrying pressure feelings I've recently had on top of my head, which I used to have years ago before all the brain surgery stuff, and which was likely caused by hydrocephalus. I'm hoping it's nothing and not a return of all that mess, though it's hard not to worry considering what I've already been through and what I know definitely is in my brain. My next scan's in a couple of months, I think (then I get the results like five weeks after that...), so hopefully I won't need to be rushed to the hospital before then. Hmm.

In ∞ the next week's post ∞, I said:

Last week, I wrote about some concerns I'd had about my brain tumour symptoms returning. That led to rescheduling my next brain scan for next week, though thankfully those symptoms have subsided now, so I was going to try to change the appointment again. I feel bad about being a bother to medical staff during this hard time, though... I actually ended up getting a call from them about rescheduling anyway, so I didn't have to push through my various mental illnesses to actually make the call. But I said something that made the whole thing really awkward and ended up cringing hard about it for a whole day anyway. Yaaay. I do so love the demons in my head.

So that time, I did successfully reschedule a scan... which as I already mentioned from the 7-month-old post was unremarkable. It didn't find anything.

I was going to try calling the nurse again today, but I think there's a fairly clear pattern here. I get this head pressure due to stressful events, I worry it's the brain cancer coming back, and then the next scan I have shows nothing untoward.

One of the things about health anxiety/hypochondria is assuming medical staff missed something, and I'm definitely having some thoughts like that now. But if it really was some structural issue, would the symptoms disappear for months, or while I'm distracted? Would they shift around so much? It's not as if they've come out of nowhere; I was pushed by multiple factors into a dark mental place recently. It seems far more likely that that is what's led to this than some random neurological issue that was just lying dormant until now.

I wish I could truly believe that at my core though, but I feel like an atheist trying my best to believe in God. This niggling doubt is so hard to completely shake, especially if it hits me when I'm asleep. My head still feels awful (though barely sleeping surely contributes to that).

Urgh... I just need to keep trying to distract myself somehow. I tried composing battle tracks for Atonal Dreams yesterday, without much luck. I ended up arranging an album of old piano pieces and trying to play some, which helped; I've not finished that yet so I might do more of that.

I'll definitely talk to the doctor more about this next time I can, though. I think last time I had the chance, the symptoms had subsided so it didn't feel like a concern anymore. It feels worse this time though, I don't know why...

I really wish I could just do my own brain scan at home! Maybe one day phones will get that advanced...

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