Dealing With Headaches

Where you go where you die is often referred to as “The Other Side”. It’s a very PC term for your favorite after-death party house. Personally, I call it The Summerland, but even I forget to call it that half the time. Whatever your spirituality calls it, are there migraines in that dimension of existence?

The Evidence

According to many holy texts, psychics and those who have experienced near death experinces, there are a lot of things on Earth that are not avilable on The Other Side. Two of these are food and bathrooms. Suppossedly, you don’t need to eat on The Other Side, but I really doubt this. Knowing human beings, we will eat whether we have digestive organs or not. And that food has to go somewhere.

Also, you don’t have to sleep on The Other Side because it’s always day or twilight and never night. I don’t like that. If I don;t get proper sleep, I’m certain to get a migraine. If no one sleeps, then there aren’t any comfortable places to sleep. Some spiritualities claim that we live in the clouds. I don’t trust sleeping on clouds. Quite frankly, I don’t trust doing much of anything on clouds. They’re so changeable. You can never depend on them. Besides, I really don’t know clouds at all.

In Conclusion

In reading all of this evidence, I have come to the conclusion that there are, indeed, migraines in the afterlife. On The Other Side, there is no place to sleep, no food to digest properly and no bathrooms. These can all lead to major migraine triggers. No wonder we reincarnate so often instead of just flitting about in paradise for the rest of eternity. We need the bathroom, something to eat and a lie down. Alll in all, migraineurs seem to have it better here on this side of eternity.

Nothing’s ever easy, is it?

Last year, when my Mom was getting consultations for spinal sugery, (which turned out to be successful), we walked into her surgeon’s office. It was stacked with trays of gourmet food. “Ah,” said Mom. “I see the drug reps have been here.”

“I don’t prescribe drugs,” said the surgeon, and then laughed at the absurdity of his statement.

Mom’s surgeon will still be able to get free food sent to his office by representatives of Big Pharma, but that’s about it. All of the free office supplies emblazoned with logos (making a pen, coffe mug or notepad look like it was ready for NASCAR). All of that has now been banned by the Phramecuetical and Research Manufacturers of America (The ban is, of course, just in America). The ban takes effect in January, 2009.

Why The Free Stuff?

Since doctors are the only legal people to prescribe drugs, companies make sure they court evey doctor they come across with the same ardour as Howard Hughes collecting actresses (except the doctors see the drug reps a lot more than Hughes was suppossed to see his harem). They shower doctors with all kinds of goodies — not just lunches and office supplies. Years ago, doctors were given such perks as free vacations, free concert tickets or even free small appliances. They got all of this whether they actually prescribed the company’s drugs or not.

Those more expensive gifts were dropped to legal pressure on Big Pharma to stop wasting on so much money pimping their drugs. That’s when the first annoying drug television ad campaign hit American airwaves. Big Pharma does anything it can to keep the costs of their drugs high — and that means big bucks spent in advertising. In this way, they can “justify” costs.

No Free Lunch

Gradually, the general public and lawmakers are catching on to all of Big Pharma’s tricks. This ban is the latest modification to start forcing Big Pharma to lower the costs of their products. It remains to be seen whether Big Pharma will actually lower their costs — chances are, they will just find some other way of blowing a huge bundle on advertising. I can just see Imitrex logos now on race cars.

The Non-Profit Group No Free Lunch offers a “pen anmesty program” where it offers to replace pens that doctors would otherwise receive from drug companies. The doctors have to send the drug-emblazoned pens to them in exchange for pristine pens that only have the brand of the penmaker on them. The group then donates the evil druggie pens “to a worthwhile cause”.

Just on a personal note, when my doctors discover that I am a freelance writer, I suddenly get showered with pens before I leave the office. The pen I’m using right now (when not on the keyboard, that is) has a Zaditor logo on it (Zaditor has nothing to do with treating any medical problem I have, sadly). My doctors are clearly as sick of free pens from drug companies as the Pharmecuetical Reasearch and Manufactuerers of America.

However, they won’t give me any of their coffee mugs.

Many people who suffer with migraines or chronic headaches take medicines called “preventives” or “abortives”. Or, perhaps they are like me and take both kinds. Until recently, I didn’t think there was ANY difference between an abortive and preventative medication, and I have two college degrees. I was recently set straight by my primary doctor, Dr. Fountain Of Youth Face.

However, if I made the mistake, then perhaps other readers out there in the blogosphere will, too. I’ve seen the terms used interchangeably in medical websites, and I’m sure I’m guilty of doing the same thing on this blog. I’ll be going back through some of my older posts to correct that mistake.

Anyway…

An abortive medication stops something once it already begins. Such a medicine would be Zolmig nasal spray, or Imitrex (sumatriptan), which is taken as soon as you feel a migraine coming on. (And remember — an abortive does NOT mean it will give you a sudden abortion. It’s just a name.)

On the other hand, a preventive medicine stops anything from even starting in the first place. In the wacky world of migraines, you would have to take this medicine every day, no matter how you were feeling. Such a medicine would be DHE. Another medication would be verapamil, which is actually a high blood pressure medication that (as a side effect) often reduced the frequency of migraine attacks in migraineurs.

Still, It’s Not A Cure All

No matter if you take an abortive or a preventive medication (or both), you still need other painkillers, ways of coping with stress and to identify and avoid anything that might trigger a migraine. Keeping a headache journal helps you identify your triggers.

Hope this helps.

This isn’t the best YouTube clip in the world, but it does have a certain amount of charm and is (probably) unintentionally quite funny. I’m not a big fan of the slide-show style of YouTube clips, but in this case, it works. “Home Remedies for Migraine Headaches” pairs some stock photography and cute clip art with some easy-to-read information on folk remedies for migraines. I don’t know what the music is playing behind it, but sadly, it cuts off. It sounds a bit like Deep Forest.

This was posted by YouHerbal.com (which sounds a little like name-calling — “Hey, you! You herbal, you!”) which is a site that sells (ta da) herbal and food-related remedies for various ailments, as well as a lot of bottles of capsules. Keep in mind that just because something is natural, doesn’t mean that it’s good for you. You can get side effects from herbal remedies just as you can with prescription medicines. And never slam back an herbal remedy without talking to your doctor first. (However, aromatherapy you can tinker with without a doctor’s supervision.)

Also, as an English major, I couldn’t help but notice some capitalization and grammatical errors. If that gives you a headache, then you’d best skip this clip and check out one of my older posts on folk remedies for headaches. Otherwise, enjoy!

A recent study in The Cohrane Library published in the Land of Oz (Australia, of course) concludes that oxygen therapy may significantly help those suffering from cluster headaches or migraines. 210 human guinea pigs volunteered to participate in nine small studies around Oz in order to compare treatments. Cluster headeadche patients, in partuicular, did much better than placebos after 15 minutes of breathing in an oxygen chamber.

Normobaric and Hyperbaric Therapy

There are two kinds of oxygen therapies. Sadly, just breathing in and out like usual doesn’t count. Anyway, normobaric oxygen therapy refers to breathing pure oxygen from an oxygen tank. Buy hyperbaric oxygen therapy (the one considered so promising) involves going in a chamber and breathing pure oxygen. Why the chamber? The chamber is put under pressure.

No, I have no idea what this means, either.

Which Leads Us To The Problem

Finding an oxygen chamber is just about as hard as trying to comprehend oxygen therapy. Critics of the Oz study point out that the migraine or cluster headache might even be over before the patient can begin snorting the pure oxygen. Also, oxygen tanks are highly flammable (not that this hasn’t stopped us from driving cars). However, this could be a first step in finding a far more practical solution.

Meanwhile, keep on taking your usual medicine.

This post is aimed more for American readers. My apologies to non-American readers. You can go look at Brad Pitt photos here.

Anyway, American Migraineurs…

A petition to Congress has been started by Diana Lee of Headache Blog Carnival and Somebody Heal Me fame. It’s currently up on iPeteitions.com. This is a non-profit site, so expect to be asked for a donation after you electronically sign the petition.

This petition is to ask Congress to rethink the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007, which suggests all public places replace their lighting with CFL bulbs. (I’m really paraphrasing the Act here, so if I painted the picture of potential public lighting with too broad a brush, I apologize.) These bulbs have been proven to trigger migraines in the headache-prone.

Although the makers of CFL bulbs constantly say their bulbs do not flicker, they sure do. It’s very slight, but it is enough to make my life and the lives of many other American migraineurs miserable. I can’t have them in my house. I hate to think I’ll be trapped in my house because I can’t tolerate the lighting anywhere else. I think they’re a great idea, but needs a design overhaul to elimnate the flickering.

What About the Planet

Considering all of the crap things we humans are doing to the planet, lightbulbs are really far down the list. Cutting out human overpopulation, strengthening public transportation, curbing our ridiculous buying habits, dropping our consumption of red meat and taxing the tar out of Big Oil will should be far up on our priority list because they have far more impact ont he planet than trying to these little piddling things like ban cigarette smoking, ban trans fats and change out lightbulbs.

There is no magic bullet to climate change and the environmental crisis. Heck, in the state of Pennsylvannia, you can’t even get the citizens to agree that there IS such a thing as a climate crisis. But making everyone in the country use light bulbs that make us sick is not going to help anything exept get the 30 million or so American migraineurs really ticked off.

Thank you and good light…I mean, good night!

Yesterday, Mom and I went to one of my favorite museums in the world, the Brandywine River Museum at Chadds-Ford, on the Philadelphia Main Line. It’s the main museum of the Wyeth family (including Andrew and Jamie). Today, they had a special exhibition of work by English equine and canine artist Sir Alfred Munnings. Although I do not condone horse racing, I do still admire the horse racing and foxhunting paintings of Sir Alfred, which only make up a small part of his overall work.

But, as anyone prone to chronic headaches knows, museums can be a potential trigger for massive pain. You have to prepare in advance to thwart a headache to not end your day hunched in the road by the side of the car moaning in pain and nausea. I don’t know about you, but that always spoils my museum trips a bit.

Be Ruthless

My best advice to avoid headaches at museums is to not try to see everything in the museum. Don’t even try to scrutinize every single detail on one floor. This leads to severe eye-strain that can and usually does trigger severe headaches, if not a migraine. Plan in advance which exhibit or floor you want to concentrate on and then take all the time you want there. If you’re not sure which floor to concentrate on, just let your instinct take you to the floor.

One of the reasons the Brandywine River Museum is so close to my heart is that it is small enough not to trigger a migraine. The Philadelphia area is thick with museums, including the world famous Art Museum in center city (most famous for the steps Slyvester Stallone ran up in Rocky.) However, the Art Museum is a definate migraine or headache trigger just for the visual overload. Pick one type of art or a specific exhibit and leave the rest alone.

Eat Breakfast

Going to a museum is exciting and mind-expanding (or, at least, it is for me). You will use up a surprising amount of energy going through the museum, even though you are going at a snail’s pace. It could be the senosry overload that wears you out. You need to eat a good breakfast (or lunch, depending on the time you visit) in order for your body to have the calories to get you through.

Otherwise, you will get a bad headache from being so darn tired.

Pack Painkillers With You

Keep them in your pocket, your purse or wherever, but be sure to take them. I also take a dose right before I leave the house. I use an over the counter painkiller to take the worst of the pain off, but you might need to take a nasal spray or other kind of medication, depending on your headache history.

Get Somebody Else To Drive

You might not be able to avoid this one, but if you can, it takes so much stress off of you. You don’t have to tense up worrying if you have the strength to drive safely home — thus, triggering a headache. Take public transportation if you can and trains over buses, since trains tend to swifter and smoother.

If you have to drive yourself, then pack a light lunch in the car and leave it in a thermal lunch box in the car. That way you can relax and recharge in the car. A car is your own little territory, which is easier to realx in than a public space like a cafe. And take all the time you need driving home.

Hope this helps.

I first heard about ear candling through James’ Headache & Migraine News Blog. I thought he was joking. You know , in the same way the some people consider NASCAR a sport and Paris Hilton a celebrity. Sooner or later, someone is going to pop out and say, “Decades-long-April Fool! Ha!” Then, my life would make that much more sense.

Welcome to the Real World

Unfortunately, James wasn’t kidding and my own Dad became a NASCAR fan. Although I have had to bitterly accept the latter, part of me still holds out hope that ear-candling is the world’s biggest online hoax. However, I had a client ask me if I was intersted in writing a series of How To articles on ear candling to treat vertigo and sinus headaches. I had to say no, but was astounded that the request was serious.

I’m Not Against CAM Therapies, But

I do happen to be proponent of complimentary and alternative therapies, especailly those I have tried myself. However, I can’t get behind ear candling. Now, how do you tell if a CAM therapy is probably a bunch of crap and better left alone?

• You stick something inside of your body and then SET IT ON FIRE
• You are given a scare tactic that you have poisons inside of your body that need to come out. Unless you just chugged cobra venom, you really don’t have much to worry about. These poisions are usually just called “toxins” and are rarely, if ever, given specific names.
• You’re told it’s a Native American tradition and all the Native Americans you know are asked about ear candling, reply with, “Say WHAT?”
• You stick something inside of your body and then SET IT ON FIRE. I realized I’ve repeated myself there, but it can’t be stressed enough — fire and your body do not mix.

Hope this helps.

It’s a beautiful day in the Pain-er-hood
A beautiful day for a neighbor… Howdy, neighbor! Hope you are having a great day. No? You say your life sucks because of acute migraines, which really aren’t so cute? Well, follow me to the Land of Make Believe, otherwise known as the wacky world of Phase I Clinical Test trials for new drugs, where anything can happen and usually does.

Can You Say ‘Transdermal’? Sure You Can!

One of the suppossed breakthroughs in modern medicine is the creation of the transdermal patch. That’s one of those white bandage doo-hickeys you tape to your body and then absorb the medicine bit by bit through your skin. This really isn’t much different than the medicinal poltices or herbal compresses native healers have used for thousands of years. However, it wasn’t hip until the success (read=lots of money made) on the nicotene patch.

Why am I not keen on transdermal patches? Because I have realtives who can’t have them because for some strange reason their bodies soak up all of the goodies in the patch IMMEDIATELY. This has lead to some very sick relatives. However, those that used the nictoene patch when they tried to quit smoking were pretty happy until they found out why they were so happy.

The Latest Future Star

NP101 is the trail name of the transdermal patch for acute migraines that has done well so far. It is put out by NuPathe, Inc, a very small pharmaceutical company reported to be “privately held” (sounds painful.) The patch is a combination of sumatriptan (the active medicine in Imitrex) and “NuPathe’s SmartRelief™ proprietary iontophoretic transdermal technology”. (No, I don’t know what that means, either, but it sure sounds impressive, doesn’t it?)

The Nitty Gritty

NP101 was tested against Imitrex nose spray, tablet and injections. There were 23 human guinea pigs descibed as “healthy”. I assume that means the subjects were not prone to migraines if they were “healthy” and that the migraines were chemically induced. I could not find details of that fact on the Internet or in NuPathe’s press release.

The big hope is that the patch can give you the same relief as with triptans, but without the wacky side effects. It didn’t give any serious side-effects to the 23 volunteers except swelling of the skin at the patch site. Although some reports say this patch will be availbale in a year, odds are with the way Phase II and Phase III Trials have gone for other drugs recently, that it will be at least two years.

Whoops. That’s all the time we have for this episode, boys and girls. Time to go back to real world where all your dreams are clouded by a haze of blinding migraine pain and splintering dry heaves. Bye for now!

Thanks as always to Diana Lee for hosting a fabulous Headache & Migraine Blog Carnival for most of the months of this year. It almost makes having chronic headaches and migraines worth while (almost, mind). As you can tell from this posts title, this months blg carny focused on “Migraines & Spirituality“, although anyone experiencing a head pain from all demoniminations and sects are invited.

My Top Picks

Personally, I feel that this is one of the strongest carnivals yet of the series. There’s nothing like trying to attach some meaning to your suffering in order to help you bear the pain. Although not all of the posts dealt with the specific topic, they did tie in and are interesting reads in and of their own right.

The best title for this month’s blog carnival goes to Rain Gem for Visualization Techniques for Migraines, Headaches, Pain and Increasing Breast Size. For some people, the female breast is certainly a religion. For females like me, they are merely twin sources of headaches. Check out the fluffy kitten picture.

The best common sense for those with migraines goes to Rhymes with Migraine’s On Migraines and a Path to Harmony. Don’t let the title fool you. It’s a very down to earth post that probably could apply to a lot of people today.

The Me, Me, Me award goes to my own Could Migraines Try to Help Us Cope with Stress? from one of the other blogs I write for, Where We Relax. Remember, if you are looking for a name for a band, why not try Comatose Locusts?

And the best post that sums it all up is yet another brilliantly written post from Megan at Free My Brain from Migraine Pain called God Grant Me the Serenity to Accept the Migraines I Cannot Change.

If I didn’t mention your post here, it’s not because it was poorly written or anything like that. It just didn’t catch my fancy today. Not your fault — mine.

Next Month

The theme for August’s Blog Carnival is yet another good topic, “Handling People who Don’t Get Migraines or Headaches”. Entries are due Friday, August 8th. You don’t get paid, but you do get mega publicity and access to information you might otherwise miss. Your blog does not have to be about head pains in particular, but the post should be related to headaches or migraines in some fashion.

See you next month!

Hello, Gentle Readers. My apologies for the absence of the last two weeks. This was due to the technical problems on the part of 451 Press, the network this blog is on. Having blogs go up and down like yo-yos is part of the nature of the beast we call Blogging For Pay. So, if you were thinking that perhaps a new blogger was needed for Dealing With Headache, forget it.

Dealing with Downed Web Sites

I’ve had quite a lot of physical and metaphorical headaches trying to get things worked out. In case you ever get into a situation where you feel your server/network/web whatever has abandoned you, here are a few tips:

• Email the advertising department of the site, network or ISP. It doesn’t matter if you have a tech problem, just bring it to the attention of advertising and magically your email will be forwarded to the correct pair of eyeballs.
• Be a bitch, no matter what your gender. Although it’s no fun being a bitch, sometimes it’s the only way to get things done.
• Give yourself a certain time frame to freak about your dead website and then THAT’S IT. Fifteen minutes is generally good enough. It’s not the sky falling in huge bloody chunks, here — it’s just a website (even if it does mean that your income will drop substantiably for a while). Stress is good only up to a point, and then it becomes really unhealthy. Also, the stress can make you prone to shopping online and watching celebrity gossip television shows.
• Keep taking the medicine.
• Complain, complian, complain (self explanatory).
• Eat ice cream. Okay, that’s not the most practical of advice and it won’t get your website back up, but it works for me and makes you feel as if you are doing domething productive. Just dont eat it fast enough to get ice cream headache.

How’s the Head, Rena?

My head hasn’t been that brilliant, but I have just started taking yet another high blood pressure medication called verapamil, which I affectionately call velociraptor (hense the image at the top). More on verapamil in a future blog post — especially when I have a good idea of what it does to me. Right now, your bet is as good as mine.

Also, I have to burn the midnight oil in trying to write enough blog posts in order to make my monthly quota. This will be a good time for any fans of this blog … whoever you may be. Let’s see how many spelling errors slips by me in my blog this week! I would offer a prize for the person who finds the most spelling errors for this week, but then again, I’m not that great with spelling to begin with, so I probably wouldn’t know how to judge.

Onwards! And, since this is a blog, upwards!

It’s interesting what pops up when you enter “migraine” into the search bar at YouTube. Granted, there’s an awful lot of crap, but sometimes you come across a little gem that you would have discovered in no other fashion. I’ll admit up front, this clip doesn’t have anything to do with treating migraines…well, maybe it does. It does suggest that people who break your heart are the cause of migraines. Having them get run over by a bus is perhaps an alternative migraine treatment.

The song is called “Migraine” although I don’t think it actually pops up in the song lyrics. The band is Moonstar 88 from the Phillipines. The music is not traditional world music kind of stuff, but very hip and very smooth. It just happens to be sung in Phillipino by a woman with a lovely voice, Machelle Baay. (I hope I got that name right — the official website for the band is down, so don’t take my credit listing as Gospel, here).

The video uses a mixture of Phillipino and English, which is how some Phillipinos talk (from what I’ve been told. One day, I might actually get to travel to the Phillipines.) You really don’t need to translate the lyrics to understand what the video is about. Enjoy!

WARNING: There is a brief strobe effect in the beginning of the clip.

Right up front, let me say that if you don’t like yourself swearing, then don’t worry about it. Do whatever you have to to help yourself through migraine pain. But there are those of us who find swearing a great relief when we are in great physical pain.

Your Thoughts Affect Your Health

I am aware that, to some extent, your thoughts greatly affect your physical health. When you think or shout swear words, you tend to work yourself up into becoming even more tense, with your heart pounding harder. However, that might happen to you. The opposite tends to happen for me. I let out a good string of profanity and I suddenly can heave a tremendous sigh of relief. Granted, this only happens when I am in physical pain. Otherwise, swearing gets me even more upset than I was before.

Think Good Thoughts

I’m all for alternative healing. I think there is an amazingly string mind-body connection that has a potential not yet fully explored. However, I can’t jive with the “think happy thoughts” approach to migraine pain management. This is especially prominant in EFT, where you are encouraged to repeat, “Although I have this migraine, I fully accept myself.”

I’m not able to do that when in the grips of a migraine, like the one I had on Wednesday. It came out more like “I am a $(^&%HB:ing person and I HATE this ^$@@*&^$%ing migrane!!!” The paint peeled off of the walls. On seeing that, even my dog knew to leave me alone.

And it helped. Of course, the Zolmig sample, curling up into a feotal position and being able to lie down also probably helped, too. But I never would have been able to lie down if I didn’t swear so much I could’ve fried an egg with my words.

This approach isn’t for everyone, granted. But if swearing helps you when you are in the grips of pain, it sounds wonderful.

I went to my doctor yesterday and broke the news ablot proplanalol not working for me. I thingk he was more disappointed than I was. So, I’m going to try a new medicine, verapamil, as a daily preventative as well as try out a couple of samples of Zolmig nasal spray. Actually, both verapamil and Zolmig (zolotripltan) have been out a while, so they’re new for my body but not on the migraine medical scene.

I didn’t realize I’d have to try the Zolmig so fast.

Flipping Pills

Why the nasal spray samples when I’ll be taking pills and don;t have trouble taking pills? Well, when I get a migraine, my stomach gets really upset and sometimes I throw up. When my doctor heard this, he said the nasal spray works for people who have trouble “flipping pills”. I had to have him repeat that.

Note to self: Latest medical euphamism for vomiting is “flipping”.

Now, I will never be able to hear the term “flipping houses” again without having a really bad mental image.

I’ll Give It A Nine

I got a migrine this morning. This was a scary kind — one that comes on without any warning (unlike most of my migraines or migraines in general). This hammered the left side of my head instead the right (as is usual for me). On the scale of 1-10 for my migraines, this was a 9.

Trembling, I ripped into that Zolmig box, where the instructions are written in everyday English and have color photographs as to how to take it (which was great, because at that point, I couldn’t focus my eyes enough to read).

You only need to shoot it up one nostril, but remember to inhale and THEN shoot it. Otherwise, it will drip out of your nose. I was so desperate, I licked what dripped out. Then, I staggered off to lie down. My Mom was alarmed when she saw me.

It was worth licking what dripped out of my nose. An hour and a half later, I felt good enough to sit up and eat lunch. Two hours later, I could go back to work.

Granted, this could in part be a placebo effect kicking in, but at this point I really don’t care.

Now, I guess I really should get that prescription for verapamil filled…

Here’s one from the “Say It Ain’t So!” Department:

A study from the University of Pennsylvannia has come in about how barcodes on medication given at hospitals were to cut down on errors. Turns out, barcodes don’t seem to make a positive difference and also seem to contribute to errors by already overworked nurses.

Perhaps the Hospital Had A Bad Day?

Nope, sorry. The study lasted a lot longer than a few days — it lasted a few years covering five different hospitals that have a barcoding medication system already firmly in place. The study also suggested that the barcoding system that we currently have often cuases more problems than it solves. When a harried nurse encounters these problems he or she will try to use shortcuts in order to get whatever medicine they think the patient needs.

The conclusion from the study wasn’t “Technology is bad.” Rather, it was, “We can make this SO much better by concentrating on changing these areas.”

And, quite frankly, we need all the suggestions we can get with our hospitals. Another study which came out in 2007 showed that errors in hopsitals (including being given the wrong medication or wrong dosage of your medication) rose 3% from 2003-2005 alone.

But I Gotta Go To The Hospital Tomorrow

As medical systems go, ours is still about the best around in care (if not cost). If you have surgery scheduled for tomorrow, don’t freak out reading this! Still go for your surgery, please. But there are some things you can do to help reduce the chances of medical errors while you’re loopy on painkiller.

• Put identification tags on your luggage or daybag to help nurses coming on shift idenify you while you’re loopy in your hospital room
• When you get your ID bracelet, make sure they put the right name on there (no, I’m not kidding).
• When you have a test done in the hopsital and never hear about the results, that could be a mistake. Unless you are specifically told “no news is good news”, keep asking about the results.
• Write down a list of your allergic reactions and medications and tape them to your forehead.
• When you can, ask what any medicine is and what is it for. When my Mom had her last surgery, she called me to Google information about the drugs the nurses wanted her to take. I was able to help confirm that she was to get the meds.
• If you’re in the hospital and loopy and can’t figure out what’s going on, call someone you know to call or visit the hospital and find out for you and then give you a report. If you don’t have a friend or relative to do this, call your primary doctor to do it.

Hope this helps