Sometimes when people deal with chronic pain or with an ongoing illness, they will start to ignore symptoms that may be warning signs of serious complications. They may ignore them because they are to busy to be bothered with them, or they may just be so used to those types of problems that they assume that they are just more of the same problem.

It is essential that lupus patients remain aware and proactive when dealing with new symptoms or old symptoms that return with regularity. A trip to the doctor may be inconvenient, but it could save your life. Sometimes when the ostrich sticks its head in the ground, it gets run over by a jeep.

The lesson for the week is don’t get run over by a jeep.

Recently, my wife had a really bad headache that lasted almost five days. She also felt jittery and anxious. She gets headaches fairly often, but this was different due to the type of pain, the duration, and the additional feeling of what she described as “nervous energy.”

We treated it with medication and ice packs, but it was a very stressful experience for my wife, who obviously has enough to deal with as it is. We were trying to think about what could have triggered the episode, and she told me she had gotten a B12 injection when she was at physical therapy. We did a little searching and discovered that these types of headaches can be a side effect of a B12 injection.

It’s odd, but I also remembered that she had a similar, but much less severe reaction when she was taking B12 in pill form sometime last year. I should really be better about keeping a more complete record about this stuff.

I was just curious if anyone else had a similar experience with side effects from a B12 shot or any other type of high-dose vitamin interactions.

Sometimes I learn a lot about what people are curious about by reading the keywords that they typed into a search engine like Google or Yahoo that eventually brought them to this site. I noticed yesterday that someone had done a search on the words lupus, dizziness, and sweating.

I noticed this immediately because it is something my wife has had trouble with for the last month or so. Typically, the sweating comes first and the dizziness follows a bit later. Now when she mentions that she’s sweating, I try and get her to sit down and rest.

The sweating thing is relatively new for her. Obviously someone else with lupus is experiencing the same symptoms, so I thought I would throw it out there for discussion.

On an unrelated note, I’ve swapped out my old polling plugin for a new one, and should have a new poll up soon. This plugin is a lot more powerful and flexible, but requires more extensive setup.