The pain of living with pain

This is a beautiful post by Ted Gioia on the mysterious pain that afflicted him and how we went about figuring out the exact cause.

The first time this happened, I jumped out of bed and ran to get an ice pack from the freezer. I pressed the ice pack to my face and—surprise!—this just made the pain even worse. I’m fortunate that the fire only lasted around sixty seconds, but if I tried to go back to sleep, it could happen again a few minutes later.

My nights now became perilous. I found that the only way to sleep without risk was to remain absolutely motionless on my back—even the slightest movement could bring on another attack.