mind blowing stuff
The hospital I picked to rule out a brain haemorrhage did have quite a few visibly queer staff. I’ve never been so happy to see a septum piercing in my life.
At the weekend, I was hospitalised after the “worst headache of my life” (doctors in the Emergency Department kept asking if it was the Worst Headache of My Life as this turned out to be salient diagnostic criteria). I think it’s a reasonable statement. I had migraines and would faint regularly as a teenager, a display of Victorian daintiness so uncontrollable that it no doubt fanned the already raging flames of homophobia surrounding me. Plus I’m an alcoholic, so I have had more than my fair share of rough headaches. I once had such a bad hangover in Paris at the age of 21 that I considered taking myself to Pitié-Salpêtrière for an IV drip but, afraid the news that I was in a hospital abroad would terrify my mum, opted instead for a day lying horizontal, unable to keep even a sip of water down.
When I was 25, I got so drunk in Italy with a random older English-speaking gay couple who shared my hotel, I don’t remember the return to my room. (I didn’t sleep with them, to be clear, but I do have some stories like that, which also all end with a shattering migraine.) In the Italian hotel, I woke up drenched in sweat in the previous days’ clothes and with a pounding headache. I had booked a day trip to Pompeii and insisted on honouring my own commitment to culture. Whenever anyone asks if I’ve been to Pompeii all I can relay about it is the splitting headache and the dizziness I experienced as I walked around it in the 27C heat that day. Vesuvius had nothing on my own erupting agony. I have had terrible headaches in the most glamorous locations. I could go on and on with the tales, to be honest. My next memoir? Shon Faye: A Life in Headaches.
But yes, the pain I experienced a few days ago, which, unlike a hangover, lasted only a few seconds, does probably count as The Worst Headache of my Life. Less a headache than the feeling that my entire head was cramping or like someone had put a giant pair of pilers on my skull and was trying to twist it off my body. Yet at the same time, it wasn’t dramatic enough that I was worried. In fact, once it abated I got ready for bed as usual and went to sleep. When I started seeing my now-boyfriend last year, I told him on an early date that I have a bit of a reputation in my family for hypochondria. I am mockingly referred to as “the worried well”. There’s some truth to this but, in fact, I hone in on things that probably do not matter, such as random twinges or skin blotches, while being quite stoic and unfazed by things that probably do (sex change surgeries, accidental overdoses, the Worst Headache of my Life etc).
This attitude of indifference to actual suffering, while easily made anxious by imagined suffering, is the sort of mix up that I think is typical of many traumatised people. We offshore our stress and grievance to illusory concerns, fixating on things that do not matter in lieu of those which we have accepted as normal to survive them.
I called 111 the morning after the strangely aggressive headache at my boyfriend’s suggestion and quickly it became clear that I had had a “thunderclap” headache (silly name) and that therefore was a possibility that I’d had a subarachnoid haemorrhage (proper, scary name). They didn’t say this on 111, of course. Like any sane person trying to stay calm, I consulted Reddit.
What was clear is that I needed to have a brain scan as soon as possible. Living in London, I had my choice of hospitals and spent a couple of minutes working out which one might have staff who were familiar with trans people. This is the sort of consideration most of us In The Community must consider in a country where there is so much institutional pressure to discriminate against us. The hospital I picked based on its location and, er, vibes did, indeed, have quite a few visibly and reassuringly queer staff. I’ve never been so happy to see a septum piercing in my life. When I arrived, the triage nurse (she was straight, I could tell) spent so long asking me about why I take doxycycline (for rosacea) she nearly forgot to ask what the daily estrogen I take is “all about”. When I explained she looked genuinely taken aback. “I wouldn’t have known” she said. Yes, it’s not top-tier woke response but I think we gotta let her have it.
My boyfriend and I told one another on the way into the hospital that we would be out in three or four hours and would still make the Schiaparelli exhibition at the V&A. We ended up staying a total of nine, after which I discharged myself against medical advice. The consultant wanted to keep me in overnight and I knew that if I complied I would have a meltdown. As the hours passed, I became increasingly disturbed by the hospital environment with its screams of agony coming from side rooms and cloistered bays. There was also the hellish lighting. I had, in true transsexual style, insisted on doing ‘subtle A&E glam’ before I left the house for the hospital (Nars tinted moisturser, MAC kohl eyeliner, Benefit mascara and a Dior blush). I had hoped to be as gorgeously lit as all the actors on The Pitt. But the Ambulatory Majors department I was sat in for 4 hours in overhead lighting had a less than ideal ambience.
