Taxing Nerves

I filed my taxes today.

Ow.

Ow ow ow ow.

Not emotionally, surprisingly. Just the normal paperwork migraine of the soul. But also… not as bad as last year? Which is its own strange kind of victory.

But the taxes aren’t actually the story.

Sunday is.

Stay with me for a minute.

Saturday was almost completely pain free.

Which, if you’ve been following this saga, is a big deal.

A very big deal.

The kind of big deal where you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop because surely this is temporary, surely the body will remember it’s angry again.

But all day Saturday the pain hovered around a one. Maybe a two if I forgot myself and moved wrong.

Which meant something else happened that night.

I rolled over.

Now, you have to understand what sleeping has been like for the past few weeks.

It took more than two weeks to discover that there was exactly one position where my head would not explode.

Left side.

Skull aligned with spine aligned with hips aligned with legs.

Perfectly.

If anything was even slightly out of alignment, my brain would immediately inform me of this fact with enthusiasm.

Violent enthusiasm.

So when I say alignment, I mean alignment.

Saturday had been so pain free that at some point during the night my body apparently decided everything was fine now.

All better!

And because I am, historically speaking, a restless sleeper, my body did what restless sleepers do.

It flipped over.

Right side.

Why not?

So I woke up Sunday morning to a raging headache and the deeply confusing realization that I was lying on my right side.

Which immediately raised several questions.

Why am I on my right side?

How did this happen?

And also: but I felt so good yesterday?

The answers, unfortunately, were obvious.

Body thinks problem solved.

Body resumes normal behavior.

Occipital nerve cluster disagrees.

So I stumbled to the kitchen, inhaled toast, tea, and Pepcid, and took the morning medication stack.

Lyrica.

Aleve.

Muscle relaxant.

Because apparently the morning routine now includes negotiating with my nervous system.

Meanwhile the nerve cluster was still extremely displeased.

And when that happens my brain sometimes tries to escalate the complaint by layering a migraine on top.

Which feels a bit like customer service escalating your call to a manager.

Except the manager is pain.

So once the food and medication were onboard, I did the only logical thing.

I went back to bed.

Covered my eyes.

Because of course the sun had chosen this exact morning to rise directly into the bedroom window.

And waited.

Sunday was rough.

But not catastrophic.

Just one of those days where the body reminds you that healing is not a straight line.

More like a very annoying zig-zag.

So we adapted.

We took the situation to the mall.

Which, surprisingly, is an excellent place for gentle recovery.

Walking.

Chair massages.

General acts of self-kindness.

Which raises a thought.

The body is an incredibly complex system.

Thousands of small interactions constantly negotiating balance.

Muscles.

Nerves.

Chemistry.

Sleep.

Stress.

Posture.

Sometimes all it takes is one nerve getting grumpy to throw the entire system into chaos.

And sometimes it takes weeks to teach the system a new rule.

Like this one:

We sleep on the left side now.

Forever.

Or until Rain explicitly says otherwise.

So today gets the award for being some absolute ass.

But tomorrow is another experiment.

And hopefully a slightly less angry nerve cluster.

In the meantime, take care of your meat sack.

It’s the only one we get this round.

Wish me luck, besties.