Clusterf*ck

How does a rare medical condition, a skunk attack and magic tie in together? By the end of this post you will find out.

I must admit that I always wanted to be rare and special. When I was eight-years-old my mother and I travelled to Rome and I met the then-pontiff, Pope Paul VI. Well, the meeting was not exactly intimate. He presided over a mass of thousands at the Vatican. I still remember him standing on that tiny little balcony waving to the ardor of the throng. Upon returning to home to America, I would grab my cape and staff, head out into the front yard and stand on my invisible ledge pretending each blade of grass was an adoring congregant. Ahhhhhhhhrrrr! The cheers of the crowd was defining. I was blessing them surely as the Pope had blessed me---blessed me to be special.

Life is not without irony.

Shortly after that trip, I started experiencing something that would define my youth (actually my life):  a medical condition that fulfilled my wish of being rare.  It took me 29 years before I even knew what I was suffering from had a name and that there were others like me.  Hortons Headache---or its more common name, cluster headache---is a 1-in-1,000 condition (or roughly one-tenth of one percent of the population), whereby those who suffer from it often describe it as a curse. All my life I had been prodded, x-rayed, MRI'd, had blood drawn, screened over and over to no relief. I was told it could be mini-strokes, meningitis, cancer.  All sorts of scary things. The true diagnosis was far crueler and more fitting of my personality. It was Greek in nature; Promethean, to be specific...

The myth of Prometheus is powerful.  After defying the gods by giving human beings fire, Prometheus was punished by Zeus. His judgment was exacting and horrific in scale. Prometheus was chained to a rock. Each morning, an eagle would descend to eat his organs and leave him bleeding, racked with pain and left for dead. Then, miraculously overnight, his organs would grow back only for the eagle to return the next morning. This went on for eternity.

So what does all this mishegas have to do with me? Cluster headaches are like a Promethean judgment. Everyday, at the same time, I get a headache---the most powerful, intense white-hot, suicide-tempting pain you'd ever experience. It's akin to a thief that steals your sanity and happiness. When that hour approaches you feel dread and doom. It's like torture. The few women who suffer from cluster headaches (males statistically make up the majority) say that child-bearing is less painful.

My clusters, like all clusters, are unilateral, meaning they only affect one side of the head, and, in my case, they occur on the right side. Unlike a migraine, clusters are a shock-and-awe type of pain. They start out rapture-quick and within 5-10 minutes they are at its peak, becoming an unbearable ordeal. Imagine a drill that starts boring above and slightly to the left of your right eye. And imagine this drill is blisteringly hot. Now, imagine it drilling through your skull and brain before exiting out of the back of your head near your right ear. Then come the tears. Your right eye (and only your right eye) starts to weep. Your right nostril then begins to stuff-up like you have a cold.  We're not done.  Accompanying this pain is the sensation of electricity shooting through your head. Imagine little bolts of lightning shooting from the drill. Now envision, as each bolt pops, you feel the sensation of an ice pick pierce the spot just where the lightning bolts struck. With each stab of the "ice pick" you feel as if your nervous system is shattering. Now, my friends:  imagine that is the starting point of the headache and the pain only intensifies from there. I moan, groan, rock and pace. I toggle between begging God for release and cursing him for giving me this pain. I roll and roll and wonder "why me Lord?" Why give this to me? It hurts so bad that I've beaten myself in the head with my own fists. I've used telephone receivers. In college, I used text books. I even once bit myself to distract, albeit momentarily, from the pain. Luckily, in my case, the headache lasts only 45 minutes and then it's gone almost as quickly as it came; a brief destructive tornado then the sun is back shining. By the time it's over I'm usually exhausted.

Cluster headaches are cyclical. They hit you regularly from about 2 weeks (like mine usually do) till about 2 months, then they dissapear. They won't return for weeks or even years if one is lucky. They usually start around age 20 and subside around age 50.  I've had them since I was 8---right after I wanted to be "special" after being blessed by the Pope.  Although they have seemed to taper off over the years, I am, unfortunately, still a life-long sufferer. My last bout was in 2008. This new cycle has lasted 86 days. Zeus, you sly devil: you goaded me into thinking I was safe.

Now for the skunk. Since moving back to the South to take care of my mother (who has dementia), these clusters have been attacking me as if I don't have enough on my plate. If you've ever been the sole caretaker of a person with dementia, you would agree that I need every ounce of strength and stamina imaginable. So waking up several times a night with intense pain is not conducive for the daily caregiving routine. My mother has developed a strange, inexplicable habit of putting our dog, Ricky, a playful adolescent chihuahua mix, out on the side porch in the middle of the night. Last Wednesday she followed this routine. It was 1 a.m. and I was asleep. The cluster hit. The dog was outside barking excitedly. There was a strange creature visibly lurking in the woods behind our house, just beyond the treeline. The stage was set for pure disaster.

I stumbled downstairs, still in awesome pain. I opened the side door and unleashed barking Ricky to let him back in.  He raced off into the darkness instead.  Dammit! I don't need this. I hear barks, growls, a struggle. I yell for Ricky to heel. Oh god, I hope he wasn't bitten by a racoon. They have rabies. He appears from the bushes and happily charges back up the steps. As he runs past me it hits. It hits. A SKUNK!!

"Shit!" I rasp.

I turn and chase him through the house and finally corral him into the garage. I run back upstairs to my home office and immediately jump on the Internet. I begin googling skunk+dog+clean to quickly learn what to do. Now my head is pounding, I'm tearing at the computer and the smell of skunk is rising to the upper floors. My mother pops out of her bedroom clutching the front of her robe and bleats "What in the world is that smell?!"  I shout while in my cluster pain, "The dog got skunked Ma!"

Moments later she's at her door again, clutching her robe once more. "What in the world is that smell?!?" Again, I shout, "The dog got skunked!"  A few more minutes, she comes back a third time: "What in the world is that smell?!"  Just like a cuckoo clock this goes on for several more minutes. So, gathering the googled information I needed,  I dashed to the car (which now smells like skunk too thanks to my temporarily locking the dog in the garage). Driving a little too fast and holding the side of my head cursing every deity I can think of, I venture into Wal-Mart. I grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some baking soda and I'm forced to wait behind a family dressed in camo buying an assortment of processed lunch meats, soda, chips and beer. Mother, father, daugher and arm-baby all dressed for combat at 1:30 a.m. for some unknown reason. The man looked to be my age but had no discernible teeth and his daughter had a dirty t-shirt over her army trousers that read "I'm a Princess."

Yes you are.  But I digress.

Finally, back home, I'm out in the dark yard in my underwear washing my skunked dog in 95-degree late-night heat, all with a cluster headache. And my mother, every few minutes, has now descended to the garage level, completely forgetting the entire skunk debacle of just 30 minutes prior. She opens the door, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

Three minutes later, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

Three minutes later, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

Three minutes later, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

But here's where the magic happened. In the midst of all this stress I'm hit with an epiphany:  Maybe the rare things that I thought were burdens are actually tiny little blessings. Maybe if I just laugh it won't seem so insurmountable. Maybe the Pope really DID bless me (and not curse me as I've always thought)---to have these experiences surrounded by people and pets that I love. That no matter how dire the straits may be, there's always a sun to appear after the hurricane. So there I sat; in my drawers covered with skunk-smelling doggie bath water, a horrifically scary headache yet I was laughing my ass off. I have been laughing ever since. Sure, my headaches are still kicking my ass. Sure, it's still stressful looking after my dimentia-laden mother. But that night was the funniest thing that has happened to me in a long time. And it made me realize how rarely special I really am.