Days 7-19: The Holidays, Houseguest and, Unfortunately, Headaches...

I am posting with a headache right now. I am not happy about it, but it is true. I did not post here for the entire time that I had houseguests. I didn't think it would last so long, but on the 26th we had a terrible blizzard which stopped all transportation out of NYC.

Anyway, at first, it seemed all was going to be well on my decreased dose of Diamox even through the holidays, but in week two of the experiment I started to notice some changes. December 30th (day 15) was the first day that I actually had to STOP all activity due to a headache and lay on the couch just waiting for the world to turn right side up again (I am VERY close to that right now). However, I wasn't terribly surprised by the headache, since I was feeling some other less painful side effects in the days before such as ear ringing, stiff neck and some eye pressure.


So, what did you DO, Nicole? I hear you ask. Right now, with my head in extreme pain, I am pretty pissed to say - I did absolutely NOTHING! I continued the experiment telling myself and all concerned family members, "It is probably just the crazy holiday schedule," because I really was doing WAY MORE than I normally do. Today, did I do too much?? If so, that would be really annoying because I didn't do much at all -

• cooked dinner, 
• did a load of laundry, 
• did 2 loads of dishes, 
• put bird seed out for the starving birds, 
• pried out my snowed in garbage to be picked up (FINALLY!! ~no garbage pickup since before Christmas because of the blizzard!!) tomorrow morning, 
• played on my Wii (this was probably too much), 
• wrote a blog post, 
• spoke to my best friend on the phone and accidentally hung up on her about 5 different times, 
• did two sudoku puzzles (was that too much strain on my eyes?!),
• got and read the mail,
• packed up a book for shipping that I sold on half.com,
• fed my dogs

OK... this list is longer than I thought, but, honestly, if you read all of this stuff, it is really nothing considering I have been awake since 9am and it is now 9pm.

Right now the top of my head hurts a lot, my left eye hurts a bit (and my vision is a little blurrier than I would like to admit), I have had ringing in my ears for a couple of hours (Oh man... I am being such a moron letting all of these things pile up) and earlier today my left ear actually hurt pretty badly.

The question is this: Do I take a look at that list above and tell myself, "OK, you can't handle that level of activity (PATHETIC!!), tomorrow just chill out a bit more," and continue on my current dosage of 1500mg (three pills) of Diamox per day with the hopes that all will be well in a couple of days?

~OR~

Do I crack open one of the capsules like my doctor said I could and take more than 3 pills for some time to see if that helps, thereby moving backwards and further from my goal of being off this Diamox?

For now: I rest. Decision by tomorrow.