Attached is a highly unflattering photo of me taken more than a year ago. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to get some water and tripped over a space heater in my kitchen and slammed my head on the stone floor. The pain was ridiculous, and in the morning I awoke to a black eye.

Some weeks later I began to get nagging headaches directly behind my right eye. I tried everything — ibuprofen, Excedrin, a leftover opioid from my shoulder surgery years earlier — but nothing helped. It was especially bad when I went for my daily walk. Not being very bright, I failed to make the connection between my fall and my headaches. Finally, I went to see my doctor, who immediately sent me to get an MRI.

I was sure the MRI would show nothing, but the doctor called me a couple of days later to tell me it showed I had a subdural hematoma — a little pool of blood that leaked between the skull and the brain. (The most common cause is from falling.) A few weeks later I went for a CT scan to determine whether the hematoma was stabilizing; it showed improvement and the doctor called and told me I was “out of the woods.” Before the call I was terrified because, according to posts I read on the Internet, there were only three possibilities: first, that it would require full-blown brain surgery, second that they bore holes in the skull and vaccum out the blood, and third, that it would resolve itself and the blood would be reabsorbed.

Luckily it seems like I’m going with the third option. However, it’s now been more than a year since the diagnosis and the headaches have not gone away. I was in London last year, visiting a museum with a friend, when suddenly the headache roared back with such a vengeance I had to leave my friend there while I ran back to the hotel to lie down. That was twelve months ago, and since then I haven’t had a headache quite of that magnitude. But I am in pain much of the time. Gabapentin, my prescribed painkiller, makes a huge difference. But I was still miserable and my GP finally sent me to see a neurologist specializing in headaches.

The neurologist told me the next step would be to inject a painkiller, like lidocaine, all around my right eye, where the pain is concentrated. Three monthly injections, each more painful than the last. One needle went into my right eyebrow, another in the right temple and one right under the eye. They gave me a rubber brain to use as a squeegie to help me deal with the pain. I’ve now had three rounds of injections and nothing has helped. The headaches seem a little milder and less frequent, but I still have a lot of pain that never completely goes away. The next treatment, if there’s still no sign of progress, will be to insert a syringe up through the nose to shoot yet more painkiller behind the eye. This is something I truly dread.

I have made some progress, there’s no doubt about that. But there are days when I feel hopeless, when the pain just won’t stop. Thank God for the gabapentin.

I’m not going to let this take control of me. I go to Milan in four weeks to see a performance of Wagner’s Ring, and then to NYC to see the new production of my very favorite opera, Tristan und Isolde. I intend to love them like never before. Movement is what makes the headaches spike. Sitting through the opera the pain should move into the background so I can enjoy the music. I’ve gone to several concerts recently, and as the music played the pain melted away, at least by about eighty percent.

I’ll post an update after my next visit to the neurologist in April (it’s almost impossible to see a neurologist here, where there’s often a six-month wait). Meanwhile, my fingers are crossed that it won’t get any worse. I think I’m on the long hard road to recovery, but it’s been one of the most trying experiences of my life. If it really does reabsorb by itself and I become pain-free again I’m embarking on a luxury vacation to Asia, flying first class on Singapore Airlines, to celebrate. If not, I’ll just have to resign myself to having a headache much of the time. I guess I could have worse problems. But this has been no walk in the park.