I have a brown circle of pigment on my cheek about the size of a dime, which I mentioned once before in Of Books and Faces. I’ve had it since I was born, hence the term “birthmark.” Over the course of my life, I have visited dermatologists for other matters who guessed the moment I sat in their treatment chair, “I’ll bet you’re here to have that removed.” For all they knew, my chest was covered with a rash in the shape of Nevada. But they were drawn to a small patch of dark on my cheek that I rarely remembered was there. I recall one doctor who wasn’t even a dermatologist saying, as if to enlighten me about modern medicine, “You know, there are lasers now that can lighten that mark on your cheek.” I said, “What mark?”
I also have slightly overlapping front teeth. My childhood dentist reassured my mother that nothing had to be done about my bite. My brother needed a bunch of orthodontia, and my mom was fretting about how to afford it all. So the dentist advised to go ahead and fix my brother’s teeth because he’d be in business someday and should have straight teeth. He told my mother that when I was all grown up, my overlapping front teeth would look sexy. He really said that. I don’t blame my mom at all for buying such absurd, objectifying advice. Back in the sixties, no one questioned the word of medical professionals. Until the end of the decade when everyone got stoned and questioned everything.
So I have no complaints about my face, except that for the past month it’s been throbbing like a boom box. I’m a longtime headache sufferer, which I wrote about in To Do: Post Office, Car Wash, Brain Scan, and this bout of weather we’re having has sent my vasodilating blood vessels into orbit. There’s nothing like two weeks of steady rain, followed by 80 degree sun, followed by more rain, and then a cold spell. It hurts just to put my glasses on. Unlike the weather, my arsenal of remedies has run dry. In the supermarket the other day, I could see I wasn’t alone in my suffering. At the end of the produce aisle, there was a young woman pressing a cool cantaloupe against her forehead like she was trying to read its mind.
If you get headaches, maybe this will sound familiar. A month ago I visited my dentist because my upper back gum felt inflamed, making my whole face hurt. He gave me antibiotics for a gum infection and the advice that if the pain didn’t go away, I should see an oral surgeon to rule out a bone infection. When the pills were gone but the dull pain wasn’t, I saw an oral surgeon who said it wasn’t my teeth at all, but my sinuses. Since I already did a course of antibiotics, my internist put me on prednisone to shrink the swelling. When that didn’t do it, I called my allergist who referred me to an ENT. I didn’t even know I knew this many doctors.
The ENT informed me that many migraine sufferers think that because the pain is in their face, it must be sinus related. He said he’s seen patients insist on sinus surgery to relieve their constant pain, only to discover it wasn’t sinus headaches they were having, but migraines. The phrase I heard from every doctor I visited was “insidious to diagnose.” They were talking about Migraine, which covers a whole spectrum of hurt. So now I have a July appointment at a headache center in the city, something I should have done years ago. If you have any personal experience with this subject or advice to share, I’d love to hear it via comment or email. Just do me a favor and leave the brown spot on my face out of it. Yesterday, as the ENT swooped in to look up my nostrils, he stopped about an inch from my face and said, “What is that on your cheek?” So many degrees, so little eloquence. I said, “My mother always told me it was a beauty mark.” I could have just smiled with my fetching overlap, but my face was killing me.
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