Atenolol

I guess part of having a blog is having the freedom to spill the beans on whatever is on your mind, even if what is on your mind is exactly whats wrong with it. I have long had problems with headaches. Middling annoyances, like gnats at a picnic. They didn't make me feel wonderful, but at least they were as infrequent as good ideas from W's camp. Of late, they have gone from pesky to persistent, making lectures even more difficult to follow then they usually are (for boredom this term, not their intellectual difficulties). Finally, largely at Tia's insistence, I made an appointment to see a doctor. This was two weeks ago.

The doctor performed a neuro exam and was thorough with her inquiries. The determination was some sort of low grade migraines that, on occasion, flare up to be somewhat worse (though not the incapacitating migraines that some suffer). She gave me a few choices, and I decided to just wait and see if the symptoms receded, but they worsened instead. For the headaches, I was prescribed a beta-blocker, Atenolol, which I began taking for the first time today (and here a thank you to Tia must be inserted for tending to me in a manner far better than I would ever tend to myself). First impressions of the medication were not positive. Instead of a low grade hum, I found myself ambling about like a stiff-legged drunk. I don't mean literally reeling through the unit, but mentally I was less steady than Dick Cheney's EKG. I drifted from focus to stupor and back again in rapid succession. I tuned in and out of conversations and had little time hiccups where you are staring at someone and they are clearly talking and, as you are staring at them you presume it is likely you, but when they stop talking and begin looking at you for some kind of response, you quickly realize that staring at the shape of their mouth did not confer upon you any sense of the conversation. (As an aside, if anyone knows a better way to extricate themselves from these situations than wetting their pants, giving an embarrassed shrug, and then shuffling off please let me know. I only have two sets of scrub bottoms.) Suffice to say, it wasn't my best day.

So, since I have the attention span of a tv-raised latchkey kid on a Pixie Stix bender, I think I will cut this short and say that it is hard, based on one day's evidence, to determine if this is any better than the headaches. Kind of like trading a punch in the face for a punch in the kidneys. hopefully I adjust, cause I certainly dont want to try to give meds feeling like this.