Not so long ago, it was not uncommon for Namine to complain of a headache nearly every day. This was only if we asked her, though — unless the pain is absolutely unbearable, she keeps it entirely to herself.
It can be a bit frustrating to know that my child doesn’t share with me when she’s in pain. But it’s not that she refuses to; it simply is not something worth sharing, in her opinion.
Namine has lived with pain for literally her entire life. For a day to go by when she isn’t experiencing some kind of pain — in her skin, in her scars, in her bones — well, that would surely be a miracle.
Pain, for Namine, is simply a fact of living. It is a part of her, just as much as her curly hair or her sense of humor. So she only mentions it, without our prompting, when it’s extreme — when it’s out of the ordinary.
Headaches have always been out of the ordinary. When one struck, it was hard to focus on anything. There were days when Namine would ask for a break from school so she could lay down on her bed with the lights off.
This, from a child who always hated taking naps. So, we set up an appointment with the pain clinic to diagnose what might be going on.
At that appointment, the doctors were unsure about why Namine was having headaches. The standard tests for the easily diagnosable and really bad (read: scary) causes of headaches all came back negative, so we left the clinic that day with a couple prescriptions to try, and not much else. As it turned out, we ended up not using or needing them.
Shortly before that appointment in the pain clinic, Namine’s cardiologist had switched her heart medication from enalapril to lisinopril. As a result, her headaches had already begun to occur less often — that was the theory, anyway. At the time, it was just a theory, since the switch in medication hadn’t taken place too long before.
But here we are, four months later, and Namine has not complained of a single headache since, when headaches were the one pain that she would complain about, and on a fairly regular basis. The doctors at the pain clinic have satisfactorily concluded that the switch in heart medicine did result in getting rid of Namine’s headaches, even if it was a side effect.
As such, they’re declared that Namine no longer needs to be seen in the pain clinic. One less doctor to keep track of? You’ll hear no complaints from us.
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