Fun with riddles!

Q: How are headaches like potato chips?
A: It's impossible to stop at just one, no matter how much you want to!

Okay, not such a funny joke.
Saturday, the day of my last post, the Relpax never really did the trick. I suspect it kept the migraine from developing to its full, vomit-inducing potential, but it was still bad enough that I spent most of the day -- from about 2 p.m. on -- laying in bed, sleeping off and on and reading when I could.

Sunday was okay. I woke and rose from bed rather gingerly, waiting to see what my head was going to do. There was a bit of an ache, but I think it was mainly a leftover kind of deal. So I went about my day, got some things done, laundry, dishes, feeding the plants. I even went out for a bit in the late afternoon to fulfill a social obligation.

But by about 8 p.m., a very definite pain was developing. Hoping for the best, I went to bed about 11. When I got up to pee around 5 a.m., it seemed like everything was fine.

I woke around 8 a.m. and lay in bed reading for nearly an hour. By the time I got up it was clear that the headache was still hanging around making a nuisance of itself.

I have so many things I wanted to get done today. If I take the Relpax, I might dodge the pain, but it usually zaps any motivation. If I don't... well, who really knows?

The trouble is, if I'm going to have any reasonable expectation of the Relpax working, I have to take it before I eat. But that means I either have to fast until I decide it's warranted, or take it before I'm really even sure I need to.

Honestly, I think one of the most annoying things about my migraines is all the choices I have to make. I'm really not very good at decisions.

This morning I said to Hell with it and took a risk.

I decided to see if I could knock the sucker out with exercise before I gave in and drank the Koolaid (so to speak).

I needed fuel to exercise, and I decided a smoothie might be a good compromise. Unfortunately, all I had was chocolate soy milk (bought in a weak moment, it has been sitting in my fridge unopened for months). Now, I don't think chocolate is a "trigger" for me, but since it is for some people, I'm a little superstitious about it (another bad effect of migraines on me -- I've been meaning to write about that for a while now -- sigh...)

But by this point I was all gung-ho on my plan. I'd made a decision and I wasn't going to be derailed by details.

I made the smoothie, laced up my running shoes and headed out into the sultry late Southeast Texas spring. I decided to walk at a brisk pace to a running/walking track about a mile or so from my house, run around that, maybe twice, then run home.

On the way there, I could already tell that my body was not really up for a run. For one thing, I'd strained my back a bit hauling around bags of mulch for my garden and shoveling the same.
So as I was passing the nearly empty parking garage at St. E, I had a brilliant idea: I'd walk up the levels -- it would be nearly as strenuous as running, but without the impact.

So I did that. Just to up the ante, I even walked up the stairs a time or two. Then I continued on to the walking track, breaking into a low jog once or twice, then backing down when my lower back throbbed in protest. All through this, my head still hurt.

I got home and it still hurt.

Paid some bills, sorted through some papers -- still hurts.

Well, I tried.

I think the exercise cure works best for tension headaches -- though I was really hoping a good endorphin release might do the trick. Maybe I didn't go long enough or hard enough, but it was getting rather hot and exhausting myself in the heat might backfire and just make it worse.

So now I'm back to square one. Take the Relpax? Or risk it?

And on the 26th day...

A headache.
I'm inclined to be a little superstitious. Surely I brought it on crowing about not having one for nearly a month.
But it's really not that uncommon for me to have a headache around "that time of the month." And I don't think I helped matters by getting up before 7 this morning to go pick up another load of mulch for my garden (which I now don't feel up to working in, alas).
I took a nap hoping for the best, but woke up with that nagging pain just starting up.
I waited perhaps too long to take Relpax and now I'm wondering if it's going to kick in at all. I should have taken it before I ate, because food seems to slow its absorption, but I hoped that eating would help.
Feel nauseated, the pain ramping up.
Really not too much to say about it. I'm grateful -- I really am -- that I had 25 days blissfully headache-free. But the truth is, I'd rather never have one at all...
I promised a friend I'd go to his play tonight and I stood him up for lunch yesterday, so I'm hoping the Relpax will do its trick.

25 days (and counting)

Don't really have time for a proper post -- tons to do at work today so I mustn't dawdle (is it just me or am I sounding oddly British all of a sudden?) but I just wanted to say: 25 days all but headache free! (I might have had one or two rather mild pains in that time -- but nothing worth mentioning)
Don't know why -- I'm just grateful.

Woe ballet

Gosh, it's been a while, hasn't it?
My reading public must be sooooo disappointed.
That's a joke, btw.
Anyway.
I've been doing pretty well the past couple of months.
A regimen of wild yam extract, multivitamins and Zicam allergy spray has been keeping things on an even keel.
For now.
The past few days have been a little rocky, but I attribute that to my impending cycle and overdoing it a bit.
Seems like I can't push myself the way I once did without some kind of backlash.
I took Relpax today. I was trying hard not to.
My head started to hurt yesterday while I was on the plane. By the time I was driving home (after a brief, yet possibly overlong stop at the Galleria) it had gotten fairly unpleasant -- though nothing compared to the one I had that day driving back from NOLA. It remained at the same unpleasant level until bedtime, and resumed when I got up this morning.
It might have stayed that way for the rest of the day. Or it could have escalated to a full blown migraine or maybe it just would have faded away.
I still mourn the days when I could pretty much count on a night's sleep to drive away any headache, no matter how bad.
Anyway, I sat on my bed for a long moment with the Relpax blister pack in my hand making up my mind to take it. I felt my only choices were to take it or call in sick, because I could not face going to work with that shrill migrainous shriek in my head.
So I took it. It worked about as well as it usually does. I was a little tired, slightly spacey, but nothing I couldn't deal with.
I'd been dreading going back to work after 10 days off, but it wasn't so bad.
But where am I going with this?
I had about three headaches last week, which is really kind of a lot when you think about it.
I decided I should make an appearance here, for some reason.
I wish I had some startling insight or other to disseminate here to make it worth someone's while to stop by. But perhaps it hardly matters. Doesn't seem like anyone's reading anyway.
I know, poor me.
Such a sad tale of woe.
Woe ballet, as Emily used to say.
But I don't feel too bad now.
My head does not hurt for the moment and it's a rather pretty evening outside -- the wind is blowing and splashes of distant lightning spice things up a bit.
Mango is sitting in the open window, and despite my sadness at leaving California, it's peaceful and even rather pleasant to be in my apartment. Whatever else about my life is dissatisfying, I do like my little place.

Reading Jane Austen and writhing in pain

Well, perhaps not ever having anyone read this is not such a terrible thing. Makes it more like my own private diary that way.
But with just a little more accountability.
After all, someone MIGHT stumble upon this someday.
Anyway.
I'm having a moment of hopelessness again.
I had a bad headache today.
And I had one Monday.
On Monday, I was at work when it started and in the middle of something so I quickly took my Relpax. It made me feel like shit, but the headache eventually faded away.
Yesterday I felt twinges, but nothing developed.
Today started out okay. I went to work, felt a little sinus-y, but had misplaced my sinus meds. When I left for lunch, my head was starting to hurt, but it still didn't seem definite that I was headed down the migraine highway.
I went home, had lunch, did a few little household tasks and finally manged to dig up the sinus stuff, which I took. It was time for me to get back to work, but my head was really starting up. I thought I'd lay down for just a minute and let the meds kick in, and I fell asleep. When I woke, it was past two, and my head was pounding.
I was still in denial about it, though. I decided I should try a warm saline nasal wash -- which helped one other time when it was a sinus type thing.
I really felt this headache was related to a low pressure system, so somehow I thought that meant it would be more easily curable or something.
Anyway.
I did the nasal wash and lay back down.
By this time it was getting on in the afternoon and I still hadn't gotten back to work.
I didn't have anything due today, so possibly Dan didn't even notice I wasn't there, but it was worrisome. I just felt too embarrassed to call after all that time. I hate telling them I have a headache anyway. Always feel like they don't believe me.
I felt like I shouldn't take the Relpax again so soon, but when it really started to kick in, I just couldn't face the pain. So I took it.
Nothing happened. I thought I waited too long. I was reading, which I can actually do in all but the very worst episodes. It isn't actually pleasant, but it passes the time.
And I try not to go to sleep late in the afternoon, because I tend to be a bit insomniac, and late napping is usually not a good idea.
But I began to feel very sleepy, and the pain was very unpleasant, so I let myself fall asleep. I don't know what time it was, but I woke up after 7 p.m. -- and the pain was mostly gone.
THANK GOD.
But as always, when I have headaches close together like that, it makes me start to worry that they're going to become a daily event and then what will I do?
I worry about not being able to do my job, taking too much time off, getting fired -- that kind of thing.
Then what will I do?
I'm so grateful when I don't have a headache, when I feel well and can do the things I need to do. Sometimes all this just seems like a nightmare to me.
Did I already mention that I feel this is my punishment for having lived too long? In another time, I might have died in childbirth.
Or maybe I could just be some recluse in a back room, high on laudanum most of the time. I guess I still have that option -- I could go to my mothers house, get addicted to narcotic prescription pain killers, etc.
It scares me.
All this because of a stupid headache.

Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away

I embarked on this little project in a moment of desperate groping for some way to feel in control of something, and now I'm having second thoughts.
It's this feeling of dwelling on the negative. Focusing on the problem instead of the solution. Something like that, anyway.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but was it really?

Or am I saying this because I've had a pretty good week and my head is behaving?

I don't know.

Anyway, I started using progesterone cream and between that and saline nasal washes, it seems to be keeping things at a manageable level.

I don't really want to think about what's going to happen when pollen season starts.

But why worry about that now?

Anxiety

I just left work without finishing the story I was working on for tomorrow.
It was -- well it just wasn't my day.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do on the inauguraton, but when I joked to my editor that I didn't think Obama would share with me the note Bush left for him, as per presidential tradition, Dan's ears perked up.
He wanted me to write about the tradition, suggested I call the LBJ library, etc.
Well, it turned out the tradition only goes back to Reagan, but in looking for more information on it, I came across a bunch of other inagural traditions started by various presidents, so I thought I could put together a nifty little story on that.
I even thought I could bring "real people" (which is what journalists call people who aren't elected officials, bureaucrats or other expert types) into it by asking random people if they had any inaugural traditions of their own (getting trashed, eating seafood, whatever...).
But from the start, it went nowhere. I looked up the names of a bunch of presidential historians, and tried to call and/or email them.
I called our local university, was referred to a particular professor who was not available. So I left a message.
In the meantime, as I said in my last post, an off-key big brass band started playing in my head.
I did everything I could think of to get my story together before everything went south, but I couldn't seem to get any sources.
I guess I could have tried to do it all off the Internet and see if it would fly, but they seem to frown on that sort of thing.
In any case, my ablity to make progress deteriorated as the pain advanced.
I knew I really just needed to go home, but I hated to go to Dan and beg off my story.
HATE IT.
HATE IT.
HATE IT.
I always feel like people think I'm making it up anyway, when I say I have a headache.
I decided to keep trying though, and I finally managed to get a Washington D.C. presidential historian on the phone live and in person.
He immediately cut me off. He was tired and chilled to the bone, he'd been up since before dawn blah blah blah.
I couldn't even bring myself to beg.
I hung up and went to Dan and told him I'd tried, and my head was killing me and I didn't have any more try left in me.
He was pretty nice about it. But he made some comment about seeing a doctor.
Well, I just saw a doctor, who gave me Seasonique, which, after I read about it on the Internet, I was too scared to try.
After giving it some more thought, I decided to give it a try next month after my period.
Of course, I didn't tell Dan all this. I just said I'd been to doctors, and all they ever do is throw drugs at it, and there are all sorts of other issues with drugs, like rebound headaches, which I'd already done and it wasn't pleasant, but then again, nothing was really pleasant anymore, so I'd have to come up with something, then I burst into tears and rushed away.
It's been ages since I cried, and I didn't want to today, because since crying has always been something that's given me a headache, I figured if I already had one, it would make it worse.
I cried half the way home (and thank God didn't get in an accident).
I'm just afraid. I'm afraid the headaches will get worse and I won't be able to work, then I guess I'd have to move in with my mom.
I love my mom, but living with her is another thing entirely.
I feel so stupid.
I'm just in this very unpleasant spot -- not really sick enough to be considered disabled, but not really well enough to function adequately.
I didn't really want to admit it's getting worse, but I think it is.
And I don't know what to do about it.