Summer is almost over. Clearly I have not been very consistent in making blog entries; there is a reason for my lax behaviour. Several reasons actually.

First, until August 1st, I was deeply involved in preparing a final submission to the insurance agency. This type of report is difficult for me to create. These documents require a great deal of time, are involved and complex, and I try to make them as factual and accurate as possible. Because they are difficult to write I must focus all my energy on completing them and I must drop everything else; everything else includes this blog.

Second, I encountered other problems. When I perform complex cognitive tasks I become easily fatigued. If I should try and “push through” the fatigue, I will end up generating headaches. Dr H has advised me that when I encounter either fatigue, or a headache, I should take that as a sign that I have overextended myself and need to take a break. The break normally consists of an impromptu one hour nap. After the nap, the headaches are gone, I am “recharged” and I can continue with productive effort.

Since formal submissions, such as the insurance company submission, are difficult for me to complete, I end up forcing myself; I need to push to get them done. Each time I have been through this process (and there have been at least three similar prior occasions) I end up falling into an unusual sleep / wake cycle. I wake up in the morning, feel fresh and energetic (see note below), and start work. Three to four hours later I begin to feel the onset of fatigue and I break for a quick nap. After the nap, I continue working until the fatigue comes on again. Another nap follows, usually of a longer duration. Then I attempt to do more work. What ends up happening is that I fall into a 24 hour cycle of work / fatigue / nap / work / fatigue / nap / work / fatigue / nap. The normal day / night structure disappears and I end up in an endless work cycle which is similar in some respects to the temporal demands of marine watch-standing.

I do not enter this cycle by choice but fall into it and then need to continue within the cycle in order to push the submission through to completion. In the last week of this effort, I noticed that the location and nature of the headache had changed.

Normally, if I try to push through the fatigue, I will generate a headache centered on a line drawn from the top of my left ear to the crown of my head. This positioning was consistent until recently.

The new headache is on a line drawn horizontally through the left ear toward the back of my head. In addition to the changed location, the nature of the headache is different. The above-the-ear headache was muted; it had the characteristics of a “discomfort,” a subdued presence compared to the type of headache encountered in my forward sinus area, a headache I rarely experience. The new behind-the-ear headache was sharper, much more “present.” It was much closer to a true sinus headache and not a subdued “discomfort.”

The other characteristic of this new headache is that it did not go away. Normally the onset of headache is a sign to stop what I am doing and take a break. Typically there is an associated sense of fatigue at the same time. Both are normally resolved by a nap. The new headache was not resolved by napping. It continued to be present after both short and extended naps.

My immediate problem was that I faced a submission deadline. There was no one else who was going to step in and take over completion of the document. And the document had to be submitted by August 1st. So I pushed on regardless. It was only a matter of two or three days to get the work done and into the mail system.

What surprised me was that after the submission was complete, and I had stopped text processing, the headache continued in the same location with equal, or greater, intensity. This was new. The above-the-ear “discomfort” had been a transient easily mitigated by a one hour nap. The behind-the-ear headache was persistent, of greater intensity, and it did not respond to napping. I became concerned over these changes and stopped all text activities including the blog.

What is interesting is that this is the first attempt to create text since the August 1st period and I already can feel the behind the ear headache beginning to emerge. So I will stop for now until I can obtain advice from Dr H.

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Note:

There was a difference between the creation of the latest document and those documents created earlier this year. I found I was less likely to wake up enthused and energetic. There was a real sense of having to “push” myself. This is in contrast to my prior experience. On one day I woke at 0400 and commenced an almost effortless stream of text. I have not repeated that experience since that date though I have frequently tried.