Episode 1

Hi, everyone! Thank you for joining me. I am Michele Cozadd and I am a survivor. I feel extraordinarily blessed to still be here and I felt that it was important to give back to the survivor community, as well as help myself through my recovery. I decided to start my advocacy with this blog so that I could document my recovery and tackle topics that are critical for us to talk about openly and honestly (sometimes those conversations will be raw and full of ugly crying, sometimes they will make you laugh and full of self-deprecating humor)…topics that are often ignored or overlooked by our medical teams. This isn’t easy. Recovery isn’t easy, but I hope that you will find you are not alone here. I hope that together we can find peace and healing. I look forward to this journey…

I had spent 20 years cultivating a career I hated. It’s crazy to see those words in black and white. I remember driving to work each morning and home each night, watching other drivers, and wondering if everyone hated working as much as I did. I was constantly anxious, I had so much stress, and I couldn’t cope any more. I kept telling myself that the money was worth it. I had done everything I was supposed to…I went to college, I got a master’s degree, I got a job and worked my way up the corporate ladder into a leadership position. So why was I so miserable? Clearly there was something wrong with me for wanting more out of life. I was planning my retirement 20 years before I could actually retire…I had decided to get my real estate license, learn real estate here and then move to Hawaii and use that to make some extra money after I retire. Until then…I’d keep working at a career I despised.

I’ve had headaches my whole life so I just learned to deal with them. They became pretty common with a stressful job. I never thought about the toll it was taking on my overall health. There was no indication that I had anything to worry about.

Despite living with migraines, the headache that hit me on March 13, 2018, is etched in my memory. There was something different about it and it changed me. I had gone out to dinner and came back home and was watching TV when my cousin called. As we were talking, everything went sideways. The room was spinning, my left arm felt weak, and I became suddenly nauseous. My cousin instructed me to get on the floor to raise my blood pressure as he thought my BP had bottomed out. I managed to get on the floor and rest my legs up on the seat of the couch, as instructed, and it went from bad to worse. I managed to hang up the phone and scream for help. Laying on the floor I began to projectile vomit and cry. The pain was unbearable. My husband sprinted up the steps looking for me as I attempted to get up. I needed help walking to the bathroom. My body failed me. The bathroom was spinning, I couldn’t stop throwing up, I had lost control of my bladder, and it felt like someone was hitting the back of my head with a baseball bat. It was the worst illness I had ever experienced. As the sickness started to slow down, I was able to regain my composure. I managed to climb into the shower to clean myself up and we talked trying to figure out what had happened. I’ve never had any illness hit me so violently or so suddenly in my life. It had to be a bad bout of food poisoning. It was the only thing that made any sense. After my shower, I slowly made my way to the guest room to sleep for the night. I didn’t want to go to the ER, it seemed like it was just food poisoning. I’d sleep it off and see how I was in the morning.

When I woke up the next day, I still felt dizzy, but I wasn’t sick anymore. The headache was still brutal. It felt like the Indians were using my head for batting practice. I’ve never felt repeated pain to the back of my skull like what I was feeling with this. As I sat up, my husband came up to check on me and asked how I was feeling. I told him I thought we should go to the ER. If I ask to go to the hospital, you know I need to go. So off we went to the hospital. I explained my symptoms and said that I had thought it was food poisoning, but this headache was just so intense. The doctor came in and after going through everything he determined this was just a really bad migraine with extremely high blood pressure. They gave me a migraine cocktail of drugs and recommended I follow up with my primary care doctor about the unusually high blood pressure. We left the hospital frustrated but hopeful that the medicine helped and I could get some relief from this headache. When we got back home, I crawled back in the guest bed and went to sleep.

The next day, I still had no relief from the headache but I needed to go to work. I managed to force myself to function enough to drive 27 miles to my office in rush hour traffic. I had no idea how I did it. I was praying for death because the pain was debilitating. How was I going to get through the day? Part way through the day, I called my family physician and explained what was going on. I told them I needed to see the doctor about my blood pressure. My dad dealt with high blood pressure so I was no stranger to the issues. I hoped that this was just a fluke and not the start of a permanent issue. They were able to get me in with another doctor the next day at lunch. I was hoping they’d be able to get me relief. So again, we waited.

At the doctor’s office the next day, we explained everything that had happened the last few days and how my headache was no better and my blood pressure had been significantly elevated in the ER. The exam was quick. There was nothing more they could do for my headache since I had gotten the headache cocktail in the ER. And although my BP was pretty high, the doctor felt that it didn’t warrant going on any medication for first time symptoms. They encouraged me to monitor it and go home and rest as much as possible until the headache passed. On the way home, I cried. The pain was so bad and I was so frustrated. I felt like I was being ignored. Like I didn’t understand my own body. I KNEW there was something wrong. This headache wasn’t normal. But I had no choice so I went home, took more pain meds and crawled back in bed.

The next day, I returned to work and tried to function. I was the IT manager on site at a distribution center. My days were filled with meetings and problem resolution out on the DC floor. It was a chaotic job that was highly stressful. I had a new boss who wasn’t impressed with things. He was offsite so I spent so much time making sure he understood how we operated there. The stress levels kept getting worse. That had to be why I was getting these headaches. What else could it possibly be.

Ten days later, I had my normal follow up with my neurologist to deal with the usual migraines that I started getting again when we moved back to Ohio in 2012. I still had the headache so figured he would be able to help me. I told him everything that had happened. He did his normal assessment, looked at my eyes, checked my strength, and asked me to walk down the hallway so he could check my gait. He told me that this was just a really bad migraine cycle and he recommended an occipital nerve block in the back of my head. I agreed. I would’ve sawed off my arm if it took this headache away. I was concerned because I’ve never had a headache so debilitating that it stopped me in my tracks like this one. I remember dealing with migraines in college while I was writing term papers. I still remember leaning over into a trash can to be sick, and then start typing again. I’ve always powered through them, knowing that they would only last a few days. But at this point, we were already 2 weeks into a cycle that was worse than anything I could have imagined. The doctor and nurse returned with my shot and gave me an injection in the back of my head that I swear was an ice pick directly into my skull. I could hear grinding inside my head with every push of the needle. Not a pleasant feeling, but if it gave me relief, I’d deal with it! They had me wait for 20 minutes to start getting some relief and I laid there in the dark room on the exam table and prayed for peace and a night that was pain free. In 20 minutes, they came back and asked if I was any better. I told the doctor there was no difference and he told me that wasn’t possible. If I didn’t feel it yet, just wait…I would. And so I left. Hoping that promised relief would find me soon.

The days ticked by in the slowest hours I have ever experienced. The pain just wouldn’t subside. Every day was like Groundhog Day. Each day, I’d wake up late, convince myself I was fine, drive to work, do as little as possible while sitting in my dark office, drive home, and crawl in bed. I couldn’t function unless it was absolutely required. There was no extra time spent in the office, no working in the evenings, I ignored emergency work calls at night because I literally could not function. My head hurt to touch. It felt bruised. I prayed for relief, even if it came in the form of death, just relief. I lived this day for another few weeks until I woke up on Saturday, April 14, 2018, without a headache. FINALLY! After more than a month, the cycle finally broke! And I couldn’t be happier because that day I was supposed to drive 3 hours to my niece’s bridal shower and I was so excited for her! I was so glad that I would be able to enjoy her day!