One of the recent threads on headaches has given me the e-courage to ask something that I’ve been thinking about for some time… here it goes:

With my PCS, chronic and fairly intense headaches are a daily battle for me. Current pain mitigation relies primarily on BotoxA injections, nortryptiline (50 mg), and Cymbalta (120 mg), but supplementation with Tylenol 3s is frequent. At various stages of my recovery when pain interventions (botox, antidepressants) have been introduced, the removal of some pain leaves my head feeling very messed up, and remains that way. The more pain that is removed, the more screwed up my head feels.

To draw an analogy, if your brain was represented by 2 eggs (each egg is a lobe) in a bowl (your skull), a “normal” brain would have two yolks individually separated and easily recognizable. In my case, with a significant amount of pain removed, my brain would be best represented by two heavily scrambled eggs.

While the pain reduction is very much welcomed, having a “mind” that feels so messed up is both bothersome and worrisome. Prior to the accident, if I took an analgesic for headache pain my head felt “normal”. I’m concerned the “messed up” feeling is my new reality for the long-term.

I know most of us feel very different post-concussion, but has anyone else experienced this phenomenon linked to pain removal?