It’s not as bad as it sounds.

Easy for me to say, I guess.

Jenny started to get a bad headache late last night. She was weening herself off the Hydrocodone — taking a smaller dose than she had been. She thinks that caused the headache.

Whatever caused it, Jenny was feeling absolutely terrible today, and it had little to do with being sore from the surgical area. In any case, the headache stayed even through the first doses of the migraine medicine.

Why did she have migraine meds, you ask? Well, she received those when she had a bad headache the night she was diagnosed with breast cancer (she never took any of those pills, but she did today). That headache on that day in September was likely caused by the stress of the news. Jenny does not suffer from regular migraines, but today’s headache was much like the headache she had the night she was diagnosed with cancer. Was it stress again? Was it the lack of Hydrocodone?

She was still feeling terrible at 2 p.m. when we saw Dr. Kronowitz.

Dr. Kronowitz couldn’t treat the headache and recommended she go to the emergency room at MD Anderson. At that point, getting a shot or stronger meds was what she needed. The truth is … through all of recovery, this headache was the worst pain she had.

In the ER, we waited … and waited … and waited.

We waited so long, that Jenny started to feel a lot better. She wanted to go back to the hotel, feeling like the headache was finally subsiding.

But we stayed … and waited … and waited.

Then they led us to triage.

Then they led us to an ER room, where nurse’s aides hooked Jenny up to all sorts of wires. When the RN finally arrived, she realized Jenny wasn’t the patient complaining of chest pains. She didn’t need to be hooked up to all that stuff. That was a mistake.

By this time, we are both really ready to get back to the hotel room and get some food. The nurse agreed that Jenny should soon be discharged, but we needed to wait for the doctor.

We waited … and waited … and waited. When he came in, he was great — nice and, unfortunately, very thorough.

(We agreed that he looked like Ray Romano, but I can’t find a photo of the ER doctor on the MD Anderson website to prove it. So we’ll just assume it was actually Ray Romano.)

He was so thorough because they wanted to be sure the headache wasn’t being caused by further spreading of the cancer. The symptoms don’t indicate anything like brain cancer, especially since it did eventually go away. He agreed that we should forgo a CT scan and an MRI — but don’t worry, we will be sure to tell Dr. Moulder, our oncologist, when we meet with her next week to discuss the pathology.

I can say that Jenny has been an easy patient this week, but she was really in pain today. Sirens from the roads that sounded faint to me in the hotel room drew cursed looks from Jenny, “Those sirens are killing me!”

As for the recovery from the surgical area, Jenny is feeling great. She thinks she’s done taking the Hydrocodone. But the long wait today made her really, really tired. It was the longest period of time she was awake since waking up from surgery. She’ll sleep well tonight.

And if the headaches stay gone, we think tomorrow’s drive home will be uneventful.

P.S. — Oh, about the appointment with Dr. Kronowitz. It was smooth (other than the searing headache Jenny was suffering). Jenny is recovering very well from a surgical standpoint.