Headaches

Several of you have asked me about Chris' headaches so I thought I would post about them here on the blog.

In May Chris started noticing he was having frequent headaches.  By the end of May the headaches were happening almost every day and the intensity was increasing.  After a horrible bout of constant migraines, I finally convinced him to go to the doctor.

The doctor did an MRI which came back clear so he started Chris on some drugs that should help get things under control.  The headaches continued in intensity and he was having them every single day, all day long.  After giving the medicine a month to work, he went back to the doctor.  The doctor immediately referred Chris to an amazing neurologist who used to be the head of neurology for Vanderbilt.  Dr. Zho (pronoundced Zoo).

So Dr. Z ran lots of test on Chris and couldn't find a thing.  Chris likes to joke that so far no one has told him he has a brain in his head.  :)      So after tests and lots of different pills Dr. Z decided that Chris is is just exceptional.  But we knew that didn't we?  Ha ha! Dr. Z was able to rule out that Chris doesn't have a brain tumor.  He hasn't had a stroke.  He doesn't have an aneurysm.  And he doesn't have a vein problem in his brain.  But he doesn't know what he has or why he is having such debilitating headaches.

The way Chris describes them is that if feels like he has a piece of rebar steel rod running through the top of his head and goes all the way out through his jaw.  Some days it's like the rebar has been heated up red hot and other days it's like someone has an electrical current running through it.

So he sent Chris to another specialist.  And this doctor is top notch!  Dr. Brandes was on the clinical trial team for one of the most popular drugs taken to treat chronic migraines.  She's a neuroscientist and runs an amazing headache clinic in Nashville.  We were so blessed to be able to get an appointment for Chris with her!

After a four hour meeting with her in November, she decided that it didn't matter what was causing the headaches, she was determined to get rid of them!!  So she started Chris on all kinds of medications.  He currently takes about eight pills a day to try and keep the headaches at bay.

The good news is that it's finally starting to work.  His pain level every single day used to be around 8 or 9 out of 10.  Now he's down to around a 4.  Which we are thankful for!  He is having a lot of side effects from the medications right now too.  I guess you can't have one without the other.

So now we continue to let the doctor tweak the medications and hope for the right combination to get his headaches gone!

We really do appreciate all of your love, support and prayers for him as he has gone through this.  It's getting better and we have faith that the headaches will go away eventually!

And be sure to mark this blog or sign up to receive email updates.  Chris' next big adventure is his mission trip with the Gideon's to Ecuador on Friday.  I'll be keeping everyone posted on it via this blog.