Migraine Monster From Hell

Beginning just before lunch yesterday, I found myself in the grip of a major migraine headache. It started softly and quietly, and I didn't pay much attention at first.

I've come to not fear these monsters as I once did. I have chemical allies that keep most of these hideous attacks at bay, and I rarely suffer a serious bout that really knocks me out. With daily doses of Topamax, probably 85-90% of all the headaches that I once had never occur at all. If I do get one, I fall back on a medication, called Amerge, that typically ends an attack in 30-45 minutes. I tend to dislike taking Amerge because it has side effects that are uncomfortable and that make it difficult for me to continue on with my regular activities (it causes me to feel freezing cold and devastatingly sleepy), but it does forestall the agony of the headache so it is a reasonable trade off if it gets right down to it.

Yesterday, however, was not within the range of my usual experience. Maybe it was the advance of a major transitional spring weather front through our region. Maybe it is the still shifting hormonal balance as my body adjusts to the new post-hysterectomy reality. Maybe it is the fact that I have been reducing the levels of my Topamax to see if I couldn't wean myself off the medication altogether now that I no longer cope with estrogen variances month to month as a migraine triggering mechanism. Who knows? Whatever was going on, my head started to hurt just before lunch. Not terribly, but noticeably. This in spite of the fact that I'd gotten up feeling really well in the morning.

So, I took some tylenol with my lunch -- hoping to forestall any advance to more serious problems, and hoping to avoid having to go to the heavy hitting migraine medicine. No dice. I got a little bit of a back off, but by 2:00 when my planning time rolled around, I knew I was in trouble. So, I gave in and took an Amerge, and went to the teachers' lounge and laid down on the couch there -- and went sound asleep. Half an hour later, when the end of the day announcements started, I was groggy, and in serious pain. Not a good sign; and not the usual pattern either. Generally, Amerge and sleep knock the headaches right out.

I stumbled through dismissal. Got the kids on their way. Put in my obligatory time after school and dragged myself to my car to try and get home. Thank goodness there was plenty of cloud cover and no bright sun to contend with. Still groggy from the drug, my drive home was both miserable and probably less than safe, but I made it. Reeling, feeling nauseous, I stumbled into the house, stripped out of my clothes and crawled into bed -- and dropped into a fitful sleep. The meeting that I was supposed to attend with Master was obviously a no go.

At 6:00, thinking that my head would explode from the pressure, I took a second dose of the medication (the maximum allowable in a 24-hour period), and unable to eat or drink anything at all, stumbled back to bed where I thrashed and flailed in a daze of blazing pain.

At 8:00, with my head still continuing to pound, and the levels of misery still escalating, I was beginning to panic. Normally, I would expect relief from the first dose of the medication, but certainly the second would have knocked the pain. This time there was not only no relief, but things were getting worse and worse. I called a substitute to take my classes and called my school principal to tell her that I would not be at school in the morning. I contemplated calling an ambulance, wondering if perhaps I was suffering something besides simply a migraine. I found an ice pack. I considered whether there was any arsenic in the house...

Eventually, Master came home from His meeting, convinced me to try some Advil (4 tablets and not the 28 that I suggested -- He reminded me that even with a headache I could still be paddled!). Sometime in the night, the weather front passed and the headache subsided, leaving me simultaneously exhausted and relieved. I curled, finally, into His chest and slept the dreamless sleep that the waning drugs leave me with. No place to go this morning was a welcome gift as I was certainly in no shape to move and groove with rooms full of adolescent and pre-adolescent youngsters first thing. The fuzziness is slowly subsiding and I am finding myself, glad to be alive.

How devastating though, to find oneself leveled so suddenly by forces unseen and so nebulous as the approaching weather. Even as I struggle to regain my health and vitality, to return to the routines that give shape and joy to our lives and our relating, it is daunting and scary to know that the vagaries of the weather can knock me out from afar and keep me muddled and mewling in my bed for hours and days, and that not all the medical science at my disposal can save me or keep me upright. Damn and double damn!

Ah well, back to it. Keep on working at it. Keep on trying. Human it would seem. The fictions that they write about the lifestyle never seem to take into account all these wicked frailties that beset us. And no wonder. Little romance in the puking realities of migraines, in the stark nakedness of post-surgical scars, in the dim, grimmness of weak humans struggling up from sick beds to simply make it through the next hour or the next day. How much more attractive the ever virile, ever lovely heroes and heroines of the lusty porn industry. Too bad we can't live in that world forever...

swan