"Make it so"...Captain Jean-Luc Picard is my favorite Star Trek captain. Don't get me wrong Kirk was cool, but he was more of a cowboy while Picard was the intellectual type and since I have a big brain I tend to appreciate intellectual solutions to problems over physical solutions. I suppose you are wondering why I'm talking about Star Trek captains. Well it's like this...people with Chiari Malformation are referred to as Chiarians. You can't tell me that 'Chiarian' doesn't sound like it should have been the name of a race of aliens from an episode of Star Trek. I’m not exactly a Trekkie so for all I know there could have been Chiarians on one of the shows. When I first thought about what the Chiarians might look like I envisioned them with heads that look like brains and they could telepathically cause intense pain in their rivals. After some more thought I came to the realization that Chiarians should look just like all the other human Star Fleet crew members, but I’m letting them keep the power to cause pain. Why should they look like the human crew members? I was hoping you would ask me that question…One of the issues that many people with Chiari Malformation face is that we usually don’t look like there is anything wrong with us. Sure we may occasionally appear intoxicated, like when we walk into doors, or use walls to steady ourselves, but generally we don’t look sick even when we are feeling craptastic, like our head is about to explode and we just want to give in and go find a nice comfy spot to lay down.
“Oreo – Milk’s Favorite Cookie”…They may be milk’s favorite cookie but I swear they aren’t only delicious…they are magic. They must contain some special ingredient because on two different occasions they relieved pain. OK, they didn’t really relieve it but I got a brief respite on Tuesday and again on Thursday. I was making the kids lunches and good ole’ Chiari was doing its best to ruin my night. On both nights when I ate a few Oreo’s while assembling their lunches the pain went away for a few minutes, scouts honor. I wonder how long I could get relief from pain if I ate a whole bag. I think this calls for a scientific test of Oreo’s pain relieving qualities. I will sacrifice myself for science and eat an entire bag of them and let you all know the results – only if they relieve the pain of course, you don’t need to know what else may happen if I carry out the experiment.
“Buzz Cut?”…I got my hair cut yesterday. Why would I mention this? Because it will be the last professional cut I get for a while. In order to have a little fun with this whole Chiari thing I decided that a few days before surgery – which is scheduled for February 8th – I would let my children give me a buzz cut with the clippers that we use to give our son his buzz cut. I figured that since the doctor will be shaving part of my head for the incision I might as well make it easier on him. And the answer is yes…I will post before, during and after pictures of the buzz cut. Hopefully I look as good with a buzz cut as our son does.
One last thing…Please check out another one of my favorite websites http://www.chiariassociation.org/ they also have a Facebook page so help spread the word by Liking them.
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