When i went to the TAM conference, there was a neurologist named Steven Novella who spoke about migraines, and how sufferers are treated like shit and such.

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I wanted to cry, thinking about you. At the end I just waited in the crowd and shook his hand and thanked him for talking about it.

Thanks, Allyson. When I think of all the things I can't work out how to do, and the smugness on that doctor's face as she said I looked "too comfortable". Comfortable? Seriously? That's your barometer for a complete stranger whose records you apparently didn't read in any detail?

Oh yeah, also: wouldn't you look a lot twitchier if you were, in fact, a junkie? Everything I know about drugs and medicine I learned from TV, but still.

Have you tried a black salon, Allyson? Just a thought.

I've totally thought about that! When i used to get the back cornrowed and beaded by a friend at work, she used to say, "white hair is too slippery."

I'm wondering if they'll think I'm a jackass, but I'm going to try it.

I'm a white girl with spiral curls. My mother, a hairdresser, could cut my hair. After I left home, I grew it out because I didn't trust anyone else. Hairdressers always wet it and cut it as if it were straight, and I end up with the poufy pyramid head. After I moved her, I said, "fuck it", went into a Haircuttery and asked for someone who could cut curly hair. A black girl named Teresa came over, took me to the back, and gave me one of the best haircuts I ever had. Alas, she isn't there anymore.

I'm going to start putting together clippings on pain treatment and minorities. I'm not going to actually flash any of it in front of doctors or nurses who give me grief (I mentioned it to one nurse once, and she kept saying "Of course, that's what you perceive..." and it drove me batshit.

But instead of reading and forgetting, I might as well put them together in one place, and maybe if it informs me when I'm talking implicitly rather than explicitly, well, there you go. I did meet another black woman with chronic pain problems (regimen very similar to mine) who had grievances very similar to mine, and we spent about an hour or so swapping stories. Never had occasion to discuss it with anyone else on the suffering end of it, though. So my anecdata is limited.

I have curly hair today. It's 80 degrees. There's a correlation. I also went shopping and bought a new summer hat and found absolutely nothing I even wanted to try on. I am in serious need of summer clothes and there's nothing at all I want in the stores right now.

Who makes compazine?

Ben Venue Labs

The more I think about that resident, the madder I get. A drug seeker would avoid predictability. Also, what the hell does pain look like? Wouldn't a person with chronic pain have to know how to put on a good face to the world? Employers frown on people throwing themselves on the floor and screaming.

But, I mean, what happened to all those hairdressers who dealt with people getting spiral perms in the 80s and early 90s? They had to cut curls. Where'd they all go?

Retired? 1982 was thirty years ago. Techniques go out of vogue. Most stylists nowadays know flat-irons best.

I'm working on Stories from the Sidelines of Science, still. I'd love to talk about it all with you and write a story about pain treatment and minorities.

It would dovetail nicely in between the story on Chuck D and the story on confirmation bias.

Wouldn't a person with chronic pain have to know how to put on a good face to the world?

It's been years. I used to cry every time I went into the ER, the first few months. It was terrifying, I was hurting, it was awful. But it takes so much energy, and it makes everything feel worse. I have had migraines bad enough recently that I cried through the whole thing, but luckily, while they're awful, I know they can be worse (because they have been), and my reporting of pain levels reflects that.