No pain yet - just a small bit of abnormal in the left visual field of my left eye. It's dark when I look at a light colored/lit scene and light when I look at dark (or close my eyes) and it wiggles and morphs. Indeed this is a scintillating scotoma. A baby scotoma.
Time for some drugs.
I'm slooooowwwwly getting ready to have a day. The extra drugs last night kicked my ass - however so far no migraine today. Let's hope that sticks.
As I do my morning (yes, it's almost 1:00 PM) fucking about on the internet and work on my research protocol, I'm enjoying the music of The Punk Rock Jukebox. Punk Rock Jukebox almost cost me my life. Hearing Pat Boone's cover of Crazy Train without warning while driving is dangerous. The Punk Rock Jukebox is a truly wonderfully excellent local show here in CT. One of the very few great things about CT in fact.
You can listen too, isn't that swell?
It's on WECS 90.1 Willimantic Fridays at 11.
Listen to The Punk Rock Jukebox Fridays at 11:00 AM EST here!
(if you have WinAmp or the will/ability to do some work to get Windows Media Player to open and play PLS).
Also on WCNI 90.9 New London on Thursdays 12- 3.
Listen to The Punk Rock Jukebox Thursdays at 12:00 PM EST here!
On the cusp of a migraine, this morning I woke up to the sounds of my musically inclined neighbor. She plays the harp and her name is something that sounds like a name you know but is not. She was not playing the harp. From her apartment was some kind of wind instrument. I like strings of pretty much any variety. I fucking hate wind instruments. Some more so than others, but pretty much the entire set is bothersome to me.
And what was being played on this wind instrument?
It was christmas music.
Continuing to sleep was out of the question, but a little dead kennedys on the ipod at least took the edge off being awake. This is not how I wanted to wake up. I had already realized 10 minutes before that (a) we had no coffee left (b) I couldn't go get any because my car was in the shop and A____'s is a stick and (c) Neither one of us had any cash left on us so even if I did wake A_____ and ask him to go get coffee, the mission had just become more complicated than the drive through down the street.
Flutey christmas music was like salt for my wound.
And I am noticing this is starting to look unpleasantly like a pattern. Oh say it isn't so....
Last Friday, it was the carbon monoxide detector. While I am glad it works and got me out of bed, several things surprised me about it. One was how easily I could have stayed in bed.
The other is how hard it is to do what you know is right (e.g. call 911, pack up your cat, sit on the porch with laptop and kitty and no coffee) when there is no immediate sensable evidence that you should.
See, it turns out there was a good reason for the CO detector to be going off last week, and that would be the presence of CO. It seems the unseasonably warm weather shut off our oil burner, which, when it restarts, causes a build up of gas. At least this is how the landlord explained it a day later when he called back - that it happened once before when the weather was warm (hey don't bother telling anyone, I mean it's just the carbon monoxide alarm and all). Landlord fixed it later last Friday by coming over and opening the windows to air out the basement.
Good. Meanwhile, I guess most of the night at least, it was wafting up....up into the spaces around the furnace, spaces like my apartment and the hallway where the CO detector was.
I'm not saying I narrowly escaped death. I don't think there was that much gas. I think though that I might have escaped a rotten sick head feeling for the rest of the day. And I think I had my ability to actually respond to an alarm tested. I discovered that when there is JUST an alarm going off, when it doesn't say what it is (see this isn't the old school bat cave, not EVERYTHING has a label on it), when you have people standing around saying "oh my I wonder what that is?", when one of those people is a man who talks like he's taking charge and going to deduce what is causing this based on whatever, his fucking Y chromosome and male pattern baldness (not loving guys this week), it's really HARD to go into your apartment, pack up your kitty, and call 911. Maybe it's years of conditioning based on meaningless latenight false fire alarms in my dorm as a younger woman, but I discovered there was almost a physical force to overcome to take the alarm seriously.
So that's my Friday so far, this one and the one before. This one has resolved...the dead kennedys/pixies shuffle seems to have done the trick.
I really gotta get me an mp3 player of some sort if I'm going to get through the holidays (wait, I mean the birth of jesus christ. Related - do you think these (self) righteous media sluts will start a campaign to boycott people who don't say "god bless you" when someone sneezes?).
I think I had a post of a similar title at a similar time a year ago. I'll have to go check that. I don't recommend any of you do, it's likely to be rambling shit about the ex and big fat breakup shit.
This year's pre-birthday good news/bad news for me is as follows.
The good news is I think I'm getting a sense of prepping for teaching in terms of what I can reasonably expect to cover, how to leave room for discussion and questions, shit like that. I'm not saying I've got it down, just that I finally have a fucking clue.
The bad news is tomorrow was not a prep intensive day and I only just now finished.
Good news: After several rounds of PT and playing "pull my leg" (literally) with my very nice and very preggers therapist twice a week at the strange circus-like clinic, after a month of religiously doing my exercises, my hip was finally not hurting most of the time for over a week.
Bad news: Migraine sex fucked it up again. I think that was what did it, not sure but it's been screwy since (hey, you should see the other guy).
Good news: My birthday is in 3 days.
Bad news: I SWEAR I saw a whole bushel more lines under my eyes tonight when I was washing my face than I saw yesterday. I'm not aging (look wise) fast enough to be super freaked about looking very old yet. That's coming, I can feel it, but it's not here yet. What I am freaked (a little) about is the getting and being old part. My body's already acting quite a bit past the prime. I think none of us looks forward to an aged existence (who would? we treat our old people worse than we treat our young people). But generally it seems that's a sense of dread based on what we've seen happening to others. I know, I used to have that objectivity. To have my own sneak preview in Feel-A-Round sucks on a very subjective, personal, and sucky level. So the eye lines are visible evidence that I really am as old as I feel.
I've had migraines since I was 22. I remember the day I had the first one, which was an aura with no pain. I was at work and suddenly had no peripheral vision, kind of like someone letterboxed my screen. There were perks to working in a hospital, although having your boss (whom you loathe) take your blood pressure is not one of them.
I didn't get a migraine with aura and pain until years after that. That one included Mr. Scotoma and when he had made his way entirely around the left field of vision in my left eye, BANG, the pain started.
Since then, I've had plenty of time and experiences to figure out what my typical migraine is like and what tends to trigger a migraine for me. I've had some where a day or more before I know I'm in that mode. Usually, it's just a 20 minute session with the scotoma thing, maybe a little pre-nausea, light and sound sensitivity, and then a headache that makes me want to burrow my head into a wall.
My triggers are pretty straight forward. A sure fire migraine mix is when it's unseasonably warm out (like this weekend), I haven't had enough sleep (like this weekend), and I am menstrual (like this weekend). I do try to avoid that combo, but sometimes you just can't. And then you just have to roll with it. Ginger and rosemary tea help. But once one has a hold of me, there isn't much I can do but curl up somewhere dark and quiet, preferably with a wet washcloth and some lavendar until I fall asleep. So what happened this week?
This one is unusual. The pre-migraine symptoms were days long. When it peaked on Tuesday, it was chock full o'weird. At one point when I was lying down Tuesday, I started saying the alphabet in my head. It's hard to explain why...if I'm in a lot of pain, I tend to do things like count, say the alphabet, conjugate verbs in Latin, and other repetitive mumbly type stuff. I just do. It's like a mantra or something. Anyhow, I got to "P" and could not get what came next. To say I didn't remember is an understatement. I just couldn't GET it.
There were a couple of other things that made this one quite different, not the least of which is that I still feel like I am in that nasty post migraine state. And so I win a trip to the neurologist next week, who will probably do little more than tell me I had a brain all along.
Now if only I can manage to get some courage and figure out how these ruby slippers work, I'll be all set.
What the hell is a migraine anyhow? You may as well ask the Ouija board, because like many other things that tend to affect women more than men, it seems migraines are a big medical mystery. If men got them and if they were correlated with erectile dysfunction, we'd have migraines all figured out, I'm sure.
For now, here's a collection of possible causes for this incredibly mysterious yet rather comon disorder:
"The mechanisms of migraine remain not completely understood."
"For many years, scientists believed that migraines were linked to the dilation and constriction of blood vessels in the head. Investigators now believe that migraine is caused by inherited abnormalities in genes that control the activities of certain cell populations in the brain."
"Migraine headaches seem to be caused in part by changes in the level of a body chemical called serotonin...When serotonin levels are high, blood vessels constrict (shrink). When serotonin levels fall, the blood vessels dilate (swell). This swelling can cause pain or other problems."
"Although much about headaches still isn't understood, some researchers think migraines may be caused by functional changes in the trigeminal nerve system..."
Personally, I think it's transmissions from aliens. I knew I shouldn't have let them put that probe in there.
Hey, guess what? I just found out this sort of pre-migraine symptom (aura) has a specific name. It's called a "scintillating scotoma".
I started writing this yesterday, and today I woke up with a migraine. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this. Stress + heat/sunshine + PMS + not enough sleep = migraine. Was this what the vertigo was about? I've never had one come on two days in advance before. Should I feel special? Hm.
Headaches are nothing new for me. I had the first migraine when I was in my early twenties. I was at work and there was no pain, just a complete and sudden loss of my peripheral vision. I worked as a clerk on an inpatient surgical unit at the time and I mentioned it to the nurses. They shuffled me off to a conference room where they played nurse on me. My boss (whom I had a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with) came in, shooed them all away, and tended to me herself. Everything else was normal but not suprisingly, my blood pressure was "a little high". I suspected that might have had more to do with who was taking my bp than anything else. I was migraine free for a few years, then when I was about 27 I had another after working in the garden at my house in MI. Since then, I get about two or three migraines a year.
Between the migraines and the crashing headaches of my neuro-Lyme infection, I suppose I'm pretty experienced in the headache area. I thought I'd share some of what these experiences have taught me. Primarily, I learned to just try like hell to avoid the triggers for my migraines. Unfortunately, life doesn't always allow for that.
Most of what I learned about dealing with my headaches I learned by listening to other people and then using trial and error. I do have a new drug which I got from a sympathetic doctor a year ago. I didn't take it for the last one, but I did take it today. It helped some. None of the drugs I've taken ever help all the way. Hence the home remedies*.
So here's a list of what I do for my wretched migraines/headaches.
Massage:
Usually, if I have a migraine I don't want to be touched. But sometimes if it's relatively mild, I can stand a massage, of the right sort. Some folks have suggested temple massage, but I find the area is too sensitive when I'm head achey. I prefer light to moderate pressure on the forehead in two places (1) right above and between the eyebrows and (2) just at the inner ends of the eyebrows (light pressure here only, it's very sensitive). This is good because you can do it yourself**.
Migraine Tea***:
2 - 3 bags of black tea (depends on your tastes and how much caffeine you want)
1 - 2 slices of lemon
1/4 of peeled fresh ginger root (chopped or sliced)
that's a couple of inches worth of ginger root
1 Tsp crushed rosemary
1 Tsp dried lavendar flowers
1 Tsp dried chamomille flowers
Poor 4 cups boiling water over the ingredients into a tempered glass pitcher. Stir and cover. Leave at room temperature for a few hours. You can remove the tea bags and strain the tea into a different container, or you can just leave the ingredients in. If you think you'll want to drink this over more than just a couple of days, I recommend straining. Store the tea in the refrigerator. I mix the tea with juice for sweetener or drink it unsweetened and dilluted with water. If I know I'm in a migraine mode but don't have one yet, I make this and drink a few cups a day until I feel clear of the triggers (I'll be drinking this all weekend most likely).
Lavender Wash:
It's just the old "wet cloth" idea really, but with lavender essential oil added. Wet cloth on the forehead and wet cloth on the back of the neck. I usually end up rubbing it all over my face, head, and neck. This one is especially good if you have someone standing around in what would be an otherwise frustratingly useless (for both of you) manner asking "can I do anything?"
Hot and Cold:
My shrink suggested this one. If you can stand it, a warm bath with a cold compress on the back of your neck. If you can't or don't want to risk getting in and out of a tub, then try to get your hands and feet warm while applying the cold compress on the neck.
Notes:
*Read my disclaimer at the end of the post in this link.
** Whenever I enlist the aid of a well intentioned amature masseur, if he decides to "get fancy" and make little circles or something rather than just apply gentle unwaivering pressure, it utterly destroys the theraputic effect. It also tends to piss me off. If you're considering asking your partner to help you with a nice head massage for your migraines, test it out ahead of time when you DON'T have a headache. I've personally found I'm much less likely to get testy if I'm not in pain (go figure!). Anger and upset are detriments to teaching and learning. Snapping at someone you love whose only offenses are being over-eager or under-dextrous, even if you are blinded by pain, will make you feel bad too. (And if it doesn't, you are not someone I'd ever care to know.)
***I read in some herbal remedy book that feverfew tea is good for migraines. Perhaps if you have zero tastebuds and aren't already nauseous, you could choke down a half a cup or so before spraying it across the room. To make matters worse, it's something that is supposed to be taken every single day, migraine or not. I suppose in pill form it might be ingestible, but feverfew tea tastes ungodly bitter. I suspect that if I took the pill, I'd have nasty bitter feverfew burps all day. Yuck. I'll stick with the ginger.
