it was a good morning

[flamingsword]

This morning I was carefully gleeful that I only had a very mild headache and no nausea. The trick is to wake up early and takes meds then go back to bed and wake up when they've already taken effect.

This lasted 'til 5 o'clock, when the head pain came back and the nausea didn't but instead I had dizziness, confusion, time disorientation, the feeling that I was going to fall off the floor, and TRACERS. It was like being on sense-hightening drugs and then having someone inject battery acid into your skull.

I took one of the Imitrex and it worked enough that I could start my last client late and be coherent enough to work on her even if things don't feel quite real (am I a hologram?). I am glad I have so many years of doing this that I can give a good massage while not being able to stand steadily or talk coherently. Our brains are a wonder.

Other migraineurs: does your vision ever start making it seem like there are lines tracing patterns on carpets and wallpaper? Any repeating visual pattern has extra lines in it if I'm neurologically interesting. :( It's very distracting.

Comments

[elucreh.livejournal.com]

That happens to me when I get migraines, which are blessedly rare. It helps me to sort of deliberately unfocus, so the lines blur? Then at least it's not like they're slicing my brain into ribbons. On the other hand I'm so blind that unfocusing is pretty easy for me, so it might not work for you? But try, I guess.

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

Yeah, taking off my glasses is the usual solution, but then I'm walking around squinting like a shrew.

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

I might have meant a mole. Possibly.

[marilla82.livejournal.com]

During mine, my vision is distorted and black spots appear. Depending upon the trigger (stress, hormones, lack of sleep, etc.), I may have tracers or I may go straight to fuzziness and then black spots. Usually, a small pinpoint means I have about thirty minutes before complete blindness. Any sort of pattern hurts to look at, including stripes or spots. Focusing is impossible and adds to the nausea.

Migraines are awful and I wouldn't wish them on the worst person walking the planet. It can take ages to find the right medication to treat an individual, especially because the medical community knows so little about them.

Do you mind if I ask what kind of daily medication you're taking? Imitrex is supposed to be an emergency crutch, designed to help you limp along until you can get to a calm, quiet place to weather the storm.

My current emergency pill is Treximet, which is just Imitrex with Advil. Prior to that, I was on Midrin for emergency and Imitrex before that. I'm also on a daily of Topamax. For the first time in years, I don't have migraines every few days.

I need an icon of rage.

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

I've been having migraines since I was . . . 12 or 13 I think? My memories of junior high are jumbled. I'm not sure. I just tried to make coffee and the smell was so strong I almost threw up. That's not one of my normal symptoms! None of this is right; it's like I'm having someone else's migraine!

I don't have a daily preventive prescription because I've avoided sunlight, the most obvious and already painful trigger, for the majority of my adult life. I've been off gluten for a year now. I didn't get any gluten OR sunlight recently, and those are my migraine triggers, right? Or those have been the identifiable ones, and now that I'd had those sorted I was looking forward to never having another migraine.

I've had basically the same headache since February 10th and it keeps coming back, getting better without going away under aspirin/acetominophen/ibuprophen for a few hours, getting worse when my blood pressure goes up, I get goosebumps and my skin tingles when I'm in bright light. I have intermittent nausea, confusion, dizziness, my eyes feel weirdly swollen, and now I'm getting migraine-like pain with TRACERS. I'm full of emotions and the most identifiable are bafflement, betrayal, and bitter frustration.

But this isn't a series of migraines. It's one long headache that waxes and wanes like a fickle bitch.