Chronic Migraine. New Persistent Daily Headache

chronicmigraineun

Nightstand Contents

1. C-Pap Machine-On floor and not on nightstand so sounds of it are a bit further away from me and not keeping me up.

2. Box of tissues.

3. Clock.

4. Sciatica support pillow- ties around the waist.

5. C-pap cleaner.

6. 3 Spiral Notebooks- I always have cheap spiral notebooks, one for writing ideas and one as a journal. Since they are cheap, I have no pressure to be brilliant and say something that lives up to the high expectations of an expensive blank journal.

7. 9 books- We'Moon-Bound date book for recording health stuff.

Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of Drugs That Changed Our Minds, by Lauren Slater.

The Pocket Pema Chodron, by Pema Chodron.

Each Day a New Beginning, by Alex Uwajeh

Living With it Daily: Meditations for People with Chronic Pain, by Patricia D Nielsen

Women Writers of The Provincetown Players, edited by Judith Barlow

Utopia For Realists, by Rutger Bregman

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

Big Red Dictionary- To look up big words in The New Yorker

Many more books under the bed and floor.

8. pen

9. 2 Lotions

In Drawer

10. Scissors

11. Lotion

12. Remote- is always handy in open drawer

13. pens

14. notes

15. Post its

16. envelope

17. nail files

 

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Paula Kamen

 

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Paula Kamen, born in 1967, has always had her work — from satire to journalism to play scripts — called “brutally honest.” (And sometimes that has even been a compliment.) A priority has always been serious research, to back up observations about beginning social trends. That includes with her first book, Feminist Fatale, noted as the first Gen X feminist report, her second book, Her Way, on young women's greater outspokenness about sexual issues, and third book, All in My Head, an early memoir/journalistic report/black comedy on women, chronic pain and invisible illness. You can find a just-reprinted excerpt of her essay defining chronic pain and fatigue as a feminist issue from 2005 in Bitch Magazine here, in a special series on women and chronic illness. Her most recent book, Finding Iris Chang, explores the mental illness behind the at-first baffling suicide of Paula's most successful friend.


All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache

When first published in 2005, All in My Head was an early first-person account of chronic migraine. It was also a groundbreaking memoir of the wider “spoonie” movement (although she used her own “marbles” metaphor), taking women’s pain and fatigue out of the closet. Salon.com said it “connects the dots on this issue of women and chronic pain in a way nobody else has done.” Kirkus described it as “sharp, entertaining, informative, and blessedly free of poor-me- see-how- I-suffered- ism.” Reflecting the absurdity of having a 15-year long headache, the book is also a black comedy in its accounts of the extremes of both Western and “alternative” medicine in America. And to bust myths about women and pain, particularly about chronic migraine, it delivers an informed journalistic report.

 
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For more on Paula's books, award winning plays, and her resources for chronic pain visit her website at

https://www.paulakamen.com 

You can read her empowering and resonating articles for chronicmigraineagain.com here-

 https://migraineagain.com/author/paulakamen/