Last night while giving blood, they gave me a nice Red Cross O+ key ring, which can replace my RACV one now that I’m no longer a member. (Mind you, so far they’re still sending me newsletters and the occasional “Maybe you’ve forgotten to pay?” letter.)

They also let me know my vital blood statistics.

Blood pressure: 117 over 76. Apparently that’s good.

Haemoglobin: 163 (aka 16.3). Apparently that’s good too, though it always varies a bit. Last time it was 147.

Weight: 77.7 Kg. I think that’s up a bit in the last few years. I traditionally thought of myself as being about 75 Kg, and not all of the difference could be in winter clothes, could it?

(A previous post indicates that in the last five-ish years, my blood pressure is down slightly, and my weight is up. In fact a friend posted an old photo of me on Facebook last week where I look awfully thin.)

Recently an article in the paper about health checks was accompanied by a quick (and probably not overly scientific) quiz people could look through to see if they were at risk of diabetes (which my father has).

I’ve been meaning to try it, so, let’s have a look. My answers are at the bottom.

Quick diabetes risk check (from The Age 19/3/2008)

1. Your age. Under 45 - 0 points; 45-54 - 2 points; 55-64 - 3 points; over 64 - 4 points.

2. Your body mass index (kilograms divided by height in metres squared). Less than 25 - 0 point; 25-30 - 1 point; More than 30 - 3 points.

(more…)

Went to the dentist last weekend for the not-quite-six-monthly-more-like-nine-monthly checkup. They reckoned my brushing is going well. I didn’t tell him I only floss every couple of weeks…

I brush my teeth two or three times a day. When the kids are around, it’s the latter, as I brush with them at their bedtime, then again when it’s my bedtime.

Some swear by their electric toothbrushes. I’m happy to stick with analogue. In the past I’ve been told off for not giving the gums enough attention, but that seems to be okay now.

Dunno if I’m taking the best care of my teeth that I possibly could, but if the dentist is happy, then so am I.

In December a friend of my sister passed away, leaving her husband and their two young children. Their friends have started a fundraiser to help him cope with the costs of raising his kids: Help Sam And Charlie.

Yay. My cluster headaches have gone away, for now, even after having gone off the medication. Something to watch out for next spring, as I suspect they’ll re-appear then.

Funny thing is I had suspected the medication would impede my ability to donate blood. I rang the blood bank and they said no, it’s fine, come on in for your appointment. Moments after hanging up, I remembered I wouldn’t be able to go to my appointment anyway because something else important had cropped up at exactly the same time. I pondered ringing back, but decided it would look like I was trying too hard to weasel my way out of it. I’ll just have to give double next time. (Not!)

Boo! My bottle of hair stuff I like from Aveda ran out, and I went to get more. (I wonder if that post from 2004 was really the last time I bought it? Nah, there must have been another one in the meantime.) It’s been discontinued. But curiously, the guy there said it’ll be back “sometime this year”. Odd. He sold me some other stuff, which I bet isn’t as good. Grumble.

Shell emailed pointing out an old entry from 2001, in which I sent an SMS for the first time. Pretty funny stuff, and I wonder what other old posts of mine might highlight the arrival of technologies that we now take for granted.

Hmmm… the first time I mentioned Google was in 2001. I remember using AltaVista a lot in the 90s, but evidently found no reason to write about it. It wasn’t until 2006 that I finally (permanently) got a camera phone — well behind the pack there, though I had dabbled previously. I first got broadband internet in 2000.

So far it’s not a good month for minor ailments. Last week Jeremy had a coughy-coldy thing; this week Isaac’s had it worse, knocking him out of school… thankfully he’s got over it in time to go off to camp this morning.

As for me, I must have eaten something bad, and my over-sensitive stomach (aka “Bowen Belly“) has been at it again overnight. Maybe it was the snags for dinner last night weren’t cooked right through, but if so, how come I was the only one affected? Not pleasant, and today I’m at home hoping to catch up on sleep.

On the bright side, the cluster headaches have almost completely gone thanks to the medication.

This week my head is a little tender however… but that’s to blame on the huge bang on the temple I got from the front door on Saturday. I know I’ve never been an athlete, but sometimes I astound even myself at my low level of coordination.

It’s not my place to elaborate on all the specifics, but a good friend of my sister passed away in quite tragic circumstances on Friday. One can only feel for her family, in particular her husband and two young kids.

BeyondBlue: Postnatal depression. Donate (no online option unfortunately).

PANDA: Postnatal and Antenatal Depression Association. Donate (online or by post).

So I’ve been having these headaches, regular ones, a piercing pain through the top-left part of my head, from my temple down to my jaw. They come and go several times a day, mostly in the morning, every hour or two for about 15-30 minutes each time. Sometimes they’re early in the morning, waking me up.

During one of the first, I was trying to open a packet of paracetemol to take a couple of pills. It was a new packet, wrapped in tamper-proof plastic packaging. Which is an absolute bastard to get into when you’ve got severe pain throbbing through your head. I was wrenching at the packet, trying any way I could to get it open. I couldn’t find a bit of the plastic to pull, I couldn’t rip it open, I was bending the box around trying to penetrate it, silently cursing whoever designed it.

I know they’ve had problems with medicines being tampered with before, but couldn’t we just have packaging that makes it obvious there’s been tampering, rather than making it impossible to get into, let alone if you’re in pain?

As it happens, conventional painkillers didn’t help anyway. After some thought and a couple of visits, the doctor diagnosed me with a rare condition known as cluster headaches. It sounds impressive because it is — apparently in some people it can induce suicide, and has been described in medical journals as the most severe pain syndromes known to medical science, suffered by human beings.

That said, I’ve evidently got a mild case, but most of the description describes what I’m getting to a tee:

• very severe headaches of a piercing quality near one eye or temple that last for fifteen minutes to three hours — check
• typically unilateral and rarely change sides during the same cycle — check
• often appearing during seasonal change — check, they popped up just as Daylight Saving started, and they virtually disappeared during our time in Adelaide
• occasionally referred to as “alarm clock headaches”, because of the regularity of its timing and its ability to wake a person from sleep — check

It’s actually caused by a dilation of blood vessels, putting pressure on the trigeminal nerve.

Hopefully this is the correct diagnosis, because I’ve now got medicine which I hope is going to work. It looks damn impressive, a little cluster in itself, a capsule half-filled by smaller bits of stuff. And apart from warnings about heavy machinery and alertness, apparently I’m also banned from eating grapefruit and drinking grapefruit juice for the duration. Not that I’m an enthusiastic grapefruit consumer anyway.

So far so good; they’ve diminished in frequency and length. So I hope we’re on the right track.

Stories from people who have them worse than me.

I have a cautionary tale for you. A few weeks ago I was merrily strolling through Bentleigh, and decided to see what they had in the discount supermarket place. To my delight they had some very cheap Cadbury breakfast bars. Ah, the goodness of muesli combined with the deliciousness of chocolate. Okay, so slightly past their Best Before date, but what difference could that make? 5 for $2, thank you very much — a rather splendid morning tea snack at a bargain price.

I ate one per working day for the next week.

The week after that, I got a massive pimple. So big it cast its own shadow. And just my luck, it was present one afternoon when I had to talk to Channel 10 about crowded trains. Yes, my pimple got broadcast on statewide television.

Sigh.

Of course it’s not just the acne that thrives on excess chocolate. There is the odd case of Diabetes in my family, and I noted last time I gave blood that my weight is creeping up — 77Kg, where I used to be about 75. So while some (principally the chocolate industry, I’m betting) like to push chocolate as being healthy, I can’t help feeling that it wouldn’t kill me to cut it from my diet totally.

So not only have I vowed not to buy any more Cadbury breakfast bars, I’ve stopped buying chocolate altogether. Well, almost. I’ve set myself a maximum of one small bar a week, and that’s only if colleagues are selling them for fundraising, Charlie Bucket-style, and I’ll still have the occasional hot chocolate (because there’s nothing I like better as a hot beverage when out).

Since then, no more big pimples. Touch wood.

(Oh damn, there’s a small one on my nose. There goes that theory.)