After being pain-free for one week, Connor woke up complaining that his “brain” hurt on Sunday.  Since he had learned to use the pain scale from the previous sore throat, he told us that the headache was a 2 and a half to 3 out of a 5.  The pain was constant on his forehead.  He did not have other symptoms like fever, runny nose, earache or sore throat.  He did not have any injury to the head.  He was still eating well and doing everything normally.  He did not want any pain medicine.  Throughout the day, he continued to tell us that his head hurt, but he was able to do all the activities, egg hunt, ride a bike and play basketball.  Even Connor noticed that he has been having pain issue; he was jokingly telling us that “this is the worst days of my life, first the throat and now my head”. 

    By bedtime, his complaint became more frequent and he said it was a 4 out of five then.  He agreed to take medicine at that point.  He was almost in tears that he could not fall asleep with the headache.  We tried icing, distracting and even moving to our bed, Connor was still too uncomfortable to fall asleep.  By then it was over an hour, we decided to try another pain med.  Stuart sat with him for awhile in his room, and Connor was finally asleep an hour and 40 minutes later.

    We were very pleased that Connor slept through the night, but Stuart and I definitely did not as we were worried and tried to listen out for him.  The next morning, Connor woke up to report having the same headache.  I talked with an Advice Nurse over the phone; we decided to give him a dose of pain med and sent him to school as he was fine otherwise.  Since I was in school for the art lesson in the morning, Connor came tell me about his headache periodically.  The pain med did not seem to make any difference.  The teacher however told me that Connor was doing fine before I showed up.  Since I had the day off, I decided that I would pick him up early and took him to see the doctor for a piece of mind.  When we arrived at the medical office, they checked Connor’s temperature, blood pressure and vision test.  He passed everything.  The doctor came in and asked both of us questions.  She did a neurologic exam and asked Connor more questions to check his memory.  Fortunately everything checked out well.  The doctor was impressed the consistency and details Connor provided to report his pain, and she suggested to keep giving the pain med as needed and watch for any worsening.  She thought it could be tension headache or allergy.

   The second night Connor was more worried that he could not sleep and so were we.  Fortunately it took only 30 minutes or so before he fell asleep.  Tuesday and Wednesday had been similar; Connor was complaining of a 3 out of 5, and sometimes the pain was over the face instead of just the forehead.  He was doing well otherwise.  He seemed to be mentioning about the headache less often, but Connor told us that he was just tired talking about it.  Falling asleep still worried him, so Stuart sat with him for a little while before he fell asleep.  We just can’t wait for a resolution to this headache soon.

By the way, he was still well enough to sing a song while we were waiting to see the doctor.