Dazed and Confused by George Ziemann -- September 4, 2008 I'm still fighting a rather persistent migraine that started as a normal everyday class headache in mid-July. Saw the doctor at the beginning of August, but two weeks later it went out of control. I went to an urgent care, which immediately called an ambulance and sent me to the local emergency room, which I arrived with a blood pressure of 240/140, feeling pretty sure my head or some portion thereof would literally explode. The usual wait time in the ER is about 2 or 3 hours. Amazingly enough, if you show up in an ambulance, there is no waiting. There was a test, though. "On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being no pain at all and 10 being the worst pain of your life, what number would you give this pain?" Is this the worst pain ever? Ever? What if I'm wrong? What if I say 10 and it wasn't really the worst pain I'd ever felt? What if I said 9 and it really was the worst? What if I was Mr. Tough Guy? "I've lived through worse than this. I'll give it an 8." "Would you like us to call your wife?" "Why, yes, that's a good idea." I gave the nurse the number. Evidently, this was just a question to test my level of awareness. They never did call my wife. I guess the important thing was just whether I would have liked them to or not. Then they gave me some morphine. Sometime later, I woke up and said, "More." They complied almost immediately. The ER doctor said he couldn't decide whether to do a CAT scan or a Spinal Tap. I vaguely remember being taken to another room and having my head in some machine, but there no cats and Nigel Tufnel wasn't there either. Eventually, he gives me a prescription for Percoset and sends me home, and my doctor agrees that this is the way to go until I see a specialist. It's been a long wait and I've been really, really buzzed almost the entire time. It's either that or pain and I'm kind preferring buzzed. I can't really go anywhere because if my head is thumping I don't want to drive and if it isn't, I'm obviously too wasted. Unfortunately, it's having a similar effect on my writing, mostly because I keep losing interest in what I'm talking about. I've got like three or four articles going with like a paragraph each. And I haven't been too anxious to crank up the Les Paul and drums the last few weeks, either. My regular doc has already seen the MRI (which happened last week) and his nurse called to tell me, "It's not a stroke; it's not a tumor; it's not a brain aneurysm. It definitely looks like a migraine." So we're pretty sure it's a fucking headache now. Only took a month. So it's not exactly going like an episode of House, although I did have to take some Vicodin when I was out of Percoset. Which brings me to an unexpected actual thought -- If you have pain severe enough to require Percoset (or any other potent pain medication) for any amount of time, the War on Drugs will make it increasingly difficult to maintain a supply, especially if you have to wait to get in to see a specialist who really isn't taking patients any more, but they're making an exception for you, so you only have to wait a month. At least with the drugs, you can't keep focused long enough to complain about the ridiculous hoops that the health insurance company makes you go through. Cause, like, if you die before you get to the MRI step, well, that's going to save them almost $2,000. And what a waste it would be if they paid for it and it didn't show anything, eh? Side benefit of all of this (besides the legal, mandatory wastedness) is that I missed the Olympics and both political conventions. Also didn't watch the weather experts standing out in the latest hurricane to prove to us once again that wind, rain, and flooding were involved. Did hear about Rage Against the Machine getting shut down in St. Paul. And McCain's VP selection. The election is definitely taking a turn for the weird. Colleges are beginning a new semester. I'm wondering how the elections are going to influence the RIAA's plans. I mean, what's the point of suing 400 people if it's not important enough to break into the news cycle? Or it that the prime time to sue a boatload of people and still keep under the radar? Come to think of it, I haven't heard much of anything from the RIAA in months. This makes me think that maybe they've given up on trying to sue the entire population of the United States. The RIAA's legal department is even less successful prosecuting file-sharing cases than the labels' A&R departments are at identifying talent. Nah, they can't give up. Not yet. They've still got two or three horrendously stupid things left to do after EMI folds. At least that's what my lawn gnome told me this afternoon.