So, despite mourning her loss and generally loving and respecting her, sometimes I just hate Pat enough that were she alive, I’d feel like shaking her.

In other words, my idea of mental health is finding new ways to blame my mother for shit. In today’s episode, I finally got into seeing a doctor after waiting a fucking week in agonizing, oh god why does my brain hurt am I dying pain. Couple hours later, and I’m mostly headache free.

Pat comes into the picture, because she mostly was a suck it up and shake it off kind of trooper. I swear to anyone who might listen, rare as they are, she would proclaim “You’re not going to cry are you?” as a challenge. Yeah, ma, way to go making me feel like a big old pussy when I was in pain.

On top of her bite the bullet and get on with life mentality, she was also adverse to the medical community. Apparently back during the Eisenhower administration some medicine provided in some situation never worked, ergo all medicine was kind of questionable. She did get us all the proper vaccinations and whatnot, and some actual medical problems were treated by professionals, but she wasn’t one to race her hurting babies off to the doctor. Not when a drop of bourbon could get you to sleep through the night.

I think she was actually kind of doctor phobic and much of her adversion was more fear than lack of belief. The truth is, and the truth she lived by, is sometimes seemingly well people go to the doctors and then get diagnosed as sick. Of course, to the rational, the words “seemingly well” have significance. To Pat, “well” than “sick” than dead was the progression.

As a result, I think, of growing up avoiding doctors and trying to pull myself up by the bootstraps, I figured just one more day and the headache would stop. But, it didn’t.

Headache on Sunday night, headache on Monday, Tuesday, slept in and took a half day of work, trying to sleep the headache away on Wednesday, Wednesday headache, Thursday, sleep some more and then finally decide to beg for health care. Begging, headache, headache, begging and finally, Thursday night, there is relief.

I got a shot in the ass that wasn’t Demerol. (I could have gone for the Demerol if I got M. to come and pick me up, which assuredly he would have done. But, in less than a week that would have meant his rescuing me from a tequila crisis followed by a narcotic coma. I decided on self-respect and no need for rehab with the weaker, non-hardcore painkiller injection.)

And, I got a whole bunch of niftily packaged “migraine attack” meds. I don’t know what is more exciting to me, the medical vindication of someone saying my wicked bad non-leaving headache sounded like it could be a migraine (although, that does scare the shit out of me), or the drugs themselves.

Each 5 milligram bit is in its own little blister pack, then that little, blister-packed disk is in a rip-open pack, then three of those packs are jammed in a hard plastic wallet. It’s like fun candy packaging for grown-up prescription lovers. Merck deserves an advertising award for packaging.

Of course, I will now waste some time and brain cells finding out the good, the bad, the dubious and the long-term, five-headed mutant possibilities of the latest and greatest prescription-strength cure. But, I will also smile at the head free of ache.