Pain

I have cluster headaches. I guess I may have inherited them from my father, though it was only later, after his death, that I learned about that from my sister. The headaches typically come in series. When a series starts, the headaches come regularly--you can almost set your clock by the time of their daily arrival. They are incredibly intense, like someone driving an axe through your head, and they attack one full side of the head--brain, temples, eyes and nose (they both get clogged and runny), teeth, mouth, jaw. Typically, again, they are of identical duration: I'm fortunate in that mine have usually been of short duration--an hour or so--and this series even shorter than before, from onset to the end of the actual headache, about thirty minutes. But then there's the "aura", a kind of pre- and post-headache echo, where the shadow lurks between times, leaving you in a state where the memory of the pain--and its anticipation--are almost as bad as the pain itself.

What's curious--and frankly a bit worrisome--about this current series is that the attacks have been irregular. It started about ten days ago, with a couple of violent hits. Then nothing for a couple more days, but more hits at the weekend. Since Saturday, the aura has been with me in attenuated form, but not a single headache, until this morning, when I woke just after six with the awareness that one was coming on. Again, the acute part lasted barely more than thirty minutes. Again, I sit with the aura and the anxiety. Why, this time, are the attacks less regular than usual? I've had them at nine at night, at three in the morning, and now at six. (Is there something about multiples of three's?)

If you're anything like me, when something like this strikes your mind grabs a hold of it and starts imagining the worst. I try to stay in touch with the teachings of the Buddha and remind myself that the mind is capable of creating wonderful delusions. This morning, I sat and watched the headache in action as I meditated, and I think that helped--though the pain was of course a powerful distraction. It's hard to watch that pain and simply tell myself that it is what it is, just pain, just another experience that the mind can either capitulate to or observe with a measure of equanimity, without getting attached. I understand that the attachment itself will simply add to the experience of the pain, but the mind does so badly want to get its hooks into everything it can!

Anyway, I'm relieved that this current headache is on the wane. I'd be interested to hear from other cluster sufferers, if you're out there, especially from those who have experienced the irregularity I have described. Meantime, I'll be spending the full day teaching for the next couple of days, so I may find it hard to find time for The Buddha Diaries. We'll see...