The anatomy of a headache

Disclaimer:
Whatever expressed here happened factually, right in front of my eyes. Rather, behind my eyes.

I was tired of convincing myself that I was hale and healthy on Saturday evening. I was just having a mild headache, which by the weekend assumed monstrous proportions. This was the worst headaches I’ve ever had in my whole life. It was worth a post about headaches for various reasons. One is the fact that headaches have always been a part and parcel of my life. Second vital reason was, this headache I had changed the way I look at myself.

Headaches were a mystery for a long time. Back when I was 8 years old, I presumed that the inside of the head was like a coconut. When I got my recognizable maiden headache, I imagined that the inside of my fictious coconut was dried up of all the water and hence the head ached. When I turned 12, I became a little mature when it came to headaches, so did my imagination. I held to the popular fad that if you did have a persistent headache, it was time for you to wear glasses. Even my family members clung to the same opinion. Then I imagined that when your brain starting growing, your cranium couldn’t accommodate the increase in size, so it ached. (Had my hypothesis been right in the wildest chance, cronies would look like eerie aliens!)

Eventually, after half-reading a lot of science books and encyclopedias, I developed scientific ways of looking at a headache. One opinion struck to my head till today. That headache(pain, in general) was your body’s way of telling “put off your tedium, you jerk! Its time to unwind.” I also learnt the sorry fact that our dear old brains stop growing after 20 or so years. Things became more disastrous when I stopped being an ignoramus. A headache made me panic like crazy. What if it was a deadly new virus? Meningitis maybe. But gradually, I became immune to such atypical headaches, and none of them killed me. They just came and went like Christmas or new year. Sometimes, I wouldn’t call it a day if they failed to come.

When I turned 20, I started introspecting headaches with a “root cause analysis” approach. If I ever had one, I would sit and wind back in time, thinking what I did to get this thing on my poor head. Possible outcomes were hangover after a mild dosage of alcohol, smoking or too much computer usage. Root cause analysis did little help, apart from aggravating my headaches. I was sure that excessive computer usage was a main reason for my persistent headaches. Some smart folks suggested me to use an anti-static screen and all that, but it failed to make an impression in me. Partly because, if anti-static screen was so essential, why wouldn’t they make it a part of the computer monitor?

Things didn’t change much. Sometimes, excruciating pain got your imagination on the run. The recent headache almost got me convinced that I was the first case in Bangalore of a Dengue epidemic. I don’t know why a wretched mosquito would bite me (of all people) in spite of the state’s stringent measures to curb dengue. I once thought I had brain tumor. I thought myself facing a grim doctor, who removed his spectacles and wore a sad face to tell “ I’m terribly sorry Mr.Badri, you have a so and so super-hyper-o-mia. You have only 3 days to live. Please inform the concerned personnel.”

If I ever had 3 days to live, I would waste 2.5 days figuring out what I would do, and whatever I wanted to do couldn’t be done in half a day. So, I will die a rather confusing death, and doing nothing at all. Now back to the headache. As I came out of my hallucinations, I was sitting alone on my couch with a splitting headache. To watch your peers rejoicing when you have a headache, is a mean thing. It sure makes me green. I put a self-sympathetic expression and break a tete-a-tete with them(in order not to feel left out and sick). Some people fall for that, most don’t.

Most headaches are harmlessly small, and don’t last for more than a day or two. In case they do, I resort to extreme measures. I go for pain killers, and they work wonderfully well. The next day, when I’m in the pink of my health, little do I realize how interesting headaches are. When I am out fresh from a headache spell, I give very good throughput and sap all my abilities to the fullest, as I come to know that sound health isn’t as eternal as it seems. I waste a lot of precious time when in good health on small talk, unwanted regrets and musings. Any work can become an unfinished one when a sudden headache creeps in and spoils your otherwise boring life. So, hail the occasional headache!

P.S you could bet that the author has scribbled this in the midst of a bad headache.