Blue moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue Moon - Billie Holiday
But in my case, last night's "blue moon" saw me there and decided to stab a skewer into my face. Again.
Some four decades ago I was suddenly struck with a mysterious pain, a mighty and fierce pain which slammed at me from what seemed to be inside my head, somewhere behind my right eye, in what I was sure was my brain. Was it a brain tumor? Was I dying? I was a healthy guy just about to turn twenty. I was too young, too fit and frankly too good-looking to die.
The pain worsened through the night and by morning I was barely functioning but I could muster the effort to drive into Providence and visit my medical practitioner at RIGHA, my all-in-one HMO.
X-Rays showed no tumor or anything else wrong. The doctor deduced I was suffering from TMJ, a malady I'd never heard of. It was due to something off in the normal operation of my jaw, the joint connecting my jaw to my skull was very sensitive and I had injured it somehow. There wasn't a cure but time and pain medication and hopefully it would go through its own healing process and fade away. I was prescribed some painkillers but I ended up not needing them within a few hours as the pain was subsiding all on its own throughout the day.
I never saw another recurrence of this issue, until last night.
At first, a few nights ago, it started as a low-level headache which I thought was part of my most recent hangover. Then, as it progressed, I thought it was eye fatigue and lack of sleep. But last night, especially when I tried helplessly to sleep, it roared into my being full force. At one point the pain was so bad I thought I'd have to kill myself. This was easily ten times worse than in the early eighties.
Of course reading about the condition, which I eventually, due to that long ago experience and articles on the web, learned it was, I found all sorts of horror stories about how, for some people, it never goes away.
Now 3:00 pm the next day and having fitfully slept from about 5 am on, I think the worse is over. It's still a little sore, and, as I'm writing this it's slightly increasing in intensity bit by bit each minute. I don't know if I can take another night of this shit.
My theory of how this happened is the same I deduced 40 years ago--I caused it by my habitual chewing of my mouth lining. I've had this most-times unconscious habit for that long, yes. I will be sure to try and stop that. I'm sure I tried back then too.
Hopefully the healing has begun and this totally goes away soon. Then I guess I'll just have to wait until around 2062 for the next attack. Oh, that would be when I'm 98. Jokes on you Mr. 40-Year TMJ -- I'm pretty sure I'll be dead by then.
EDIT: Nope, it didn't go gently into the night. It ratcheted up in intensity slowly but surely. Now, at 8 pm, I'm back to where I was two nights ago when I knew it was something like TMJ. Sleep helps so I've basically have done that all day. Now, a few minutes into sitting at my desk and it's intensifying again. Today it's accompanied by blocked sinus and inflammation of my right thyroid gland. It's acting like a weird flu. Is this all sinus flu or is it finally the Covid? Ironically, I'm scheduled to see ARPN Gonzales on Tuesday. I'll have her check me out. Hopefully by then this will all have subsided.
EDIT 2: Welp. this malady was just as bad Saturday night as the night before. It subsides and seems like it's almost gone, then bang, it's back again. And shifting from TMJ like symptoms to right thyroid/throat pain like I had with a flu I had a few years ago.
Out of an abundance of caution, I went to Walgreens Sunday at noon for a Covid test. The results:
So it's not the Rona. I'm also getting some nasty rotten meat smells and dank spit, and when I swabbed the big Q-Tip thing for the test, the snot was brownish looking. Maybe it's a bacterial infection? I'll ask Esmeralda for antibiotics on Tuesday just in case. Plus, we know those healthcare folks love giving out antibiotics for everything, like in the above link.