The World According to Angie

Migraines, Eddie burps, and Toastmasters speeches

My Monday was lovely and productive, and as I crawled into bed, I had the vague thought that something was sort of feeling funny at the back of my head.  And when I woke up this morning, it had escalated into a full-blown migraine.

I know that some of the research says you're not supposed to be able to wake up with a migraine; if you wake up with it, it's actually some other kind of headache ... but for me, and my mom, that's not the case.  In fact, about two thirds of the time we wake up either in the middle of the night or in the morning with them, rather than having them come on in the middle of the day.

At any rate ... I think this one was triggered by the change in the weather.  The wind was blowing something fierce here in North Texas today - hard enough to knock out power in sections of town - and a cold front has moved in tonight.  So as I'm sitting in my recliner, grateful for the fact that the headache has finally receeded, wondering if I'm going to be able to sleep tonight seeing as how I slept for so much of today, I'm bundled up in about six layers of fleece.

Did you know that if you put enough fleece on, it begins to generate enough static charge that as you walk, you become surrounded by an electromagnetic field, and all sorts of stuff will start flying toward you?  Like small dogs that really don't like it when you reach out and shock them.

Speaking of Eddie, he's feeling punky today, too.  Poor baby... Jim and I have come to the conclusion that he's got an extremely sensitive stomach, and is very emotional - bad combination.  We're really good about not giving him table scraps (okay, with the one exception of the time I thought he might enjoy a tater tot from Sonic ... my bad, the poor thing threw up the entire next day) so all he eats is his Iams food, but it seems to not sit well with him.  So we're about to switch him to something made for dogs with sensitive stomachs.  Hopefully that will help with his little gas issue ... I've never seen a dog belch quite as much as Eddie-boy.

What a combination we've been today - Migraine!Angie and Eddie the Burping Yorkie.  Sheesh...

At least if I can't sleep tonight, I've got something to keep me occupied ... I'm supposed to speak at my Toastmasters club tomorrow.  And I'm not prepared.  And I have no excuse, seeing as how I'm VP-Education.  Such a good example I set for our new members, eh?  Groan...  This is my last speech from the C&L manual for my 4th CC award - well, first CC after three CTMs, if you want to be specific about it - and since I skipped around, it's assignment #5 - Your Body Speaks.

Hey, maybe I can just have Eddie come deliver the speech for me.  Lately, his body's been doing a LOT of speaking.

But seriously ... I've picked out my topic at least, and I'm going to throw together some notes, and see if I can pull off a fun, funny hip-pocket speech tomorrow.  If it goes well, I'll post the audio here on my blog for you to enjoy.  (We have a member who graciously records our meetings for us.)  And if it doesn't go well ... well, maybe I'll dig out a microphone and record some of Eddie's "speaking" instead.

Or not.

I don't know what it is with me and the fascination with dog gas tonight; let's blame it on the Imitrex.  There's a new side-effect: may cause irregular heartbeat, dry mouth, and intense scrutiny of canine belching.  Betcha won't see that on Web MD...

Before this post gets any more bizarre, I'm going to sign off.  This will teach me to blog when I'm out of it, and it'll teach some of you not to email me, asking when I'm going to update my blog.  You never know what you're going to get...

Migraine Misery (again)

( - brace yourself, this is gonna be a bit of a pity party - )

I don't know what to attribute it to.  Is it the change in the weather?  It finally started to feel like autumn here in North Dallas yesterday.  Is it the sinus infection I continue to fight, despite the fact that I'm on the 8th day of my second round of antibiotics?  A frustrated call to my otolaryngologist this week yielded nothing more uplifting than "I can't do anything more for you right now with prescriptions, so finish the Avelox and keep your appointment so we can do that x-ray."  Is it all the stress I'm under at work?  Yeah, it continues to get worse, and not better.

Chances are, it's a combination of all three.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling not-so-good.  I attributed it to the continuing fight with my sinuses.  I had some really weird neck pain ... figured it was stress.  Tried eating breakfast, and couldn't stomach it ... figured it was still more stress.  So I get to the office, fight my way through the morning, get to noontime, and deliver my scheduled Lunch & Learn for my home Toastmasters Club.  (This was my week to do "Managing Dysfunctional Behavior in Meetings.")  It seemed to go pretty well.

After the presentation, Jim and I headed down to the cafe, where I managed a lunch of grilled cheese and skim milk.  And as we were finishing up, and putting our trays away, it hit me like a freight train: shooting, burning pain behind my eye.  The pain in my neck intensified.  If I didn't know better, I would have said it was a stroke... but the floating spots I was seeing told me it was a migraine, and it was coming on fast.

I beelined back to my desk and pulled the card of Imitrex tablets out of my purse, and downed one with a glass of water.  Then, I started to shiver.  What on earth?  It was like my head was on fire, and my body was freezing... so I grabbed the fleece cape I had stashed on the back of my door, and wrapped up in it ... and sat down at my computer to try and get a little work done while I waited for the Imitrex to kick in.

Those of you who suffer from migraines are probably laughing right now.  See, what I really needed was a dark room and someplace to lie down for an hour or two.  But I was trying to be a good, productive employee.  So I stuck it out.  And thirty minutes later, I called Jim, and asked him to drive me home.

While I waited for him down in the lobby, several co-workers passed by ... and I must have looked like hell, because they all stopped, with concerned looks on their faces, and one of them actually sat with me and wouldn't leave until Jim arrived.  She told me that "something must be in the air" because she had a migraine two days ago, and there were another three people in her department who were out that very same day with them.

What's going on???

So I got bundled up into the car, and managed not to toss my cookies on the way back to Jim's house.  He was going to work from home for the rest of the afternoon in order to keep an eye on me.  And this is where I give him major props for being the best, absolute best darn boyfriend a girl could hope for ... because I didn't have to go through that alone.

He got me comfortable on his couch.  He made the room pitch-black dark.  He brought a bucket to put next to the couch "just in case."  (How many guys will bring you a barf bucket?  If they do, they're a keeper...)  He rubbed my neck and shoulders and head, and then laid me down for a nap.  And he got me up 2 hours later so I could take the second Imitrex.

When I woke up at 5pm, my headache was ... not gone ... but held at bay.  Sort of like a wall of water that's being held back behind a dam.  You know it's there.  You can hear the rumbling, and you can feel the damp, and you know that it's a precarious balance between you staying dry and you getting drenched ... (how's that for a metaphor, eh?) ... but the Imitrex was doing its job, and I was able to be functional for a few hours.  I don't much like the way Imitrex feels as it starts to do its thing - you know it feels when you're swimming in chlorinated water, and you get water up your nose?  That burning sensation that makes your eyes water?  Well, Imitrex does that to you.  Imagine that sensation going up your chest, your neck, into your face.  It beats the pain of a migraine, but it's still not pleasant.

It was 1am, though, before the shaky feeling wore off enough that I could settle down to get to sleep.  And when I woke at 6a this morning ... the migraine was back.

There are few things that make a migraine sufferer feel so despondent as waking up the day after a migraine only to discover the headache has returned.  Sleep is a blissful retreat, an escape from the pain of the headache, and it's supposed to wash you clean of it.  You're supposed to wake up with a fresh slate, a new day, and a chance for a headache-free one at that.  To wake up first thing in the morning with a migraine is like having the entire world come crashing in all around you the moment your eyes open.

It's enough to make you want to cry ... but that only makes the pain worse.

I had to go to the office this morning.  I had no choice: there was a dealer tour this morning, and i was the first presenter ... and the people who could have backed me up were all out of the office.  So I got up, got dressed, and dragged myself in.

Why is it that people feel the need to tell you that "You look like crap!"?  Do they think that makes you feel any better?  I must have explained my migraine to a dozen people before 9am.  The dealer tour was passable, not my best work, but it got done, and then I packed it up and headed home ... to where the meds were.

More Imitrex.  Another nap.  And now, here I am, feeling shaky, woozy, like I'm standing at the base of that 100-foot-high dam, feeling the burgeoning power of all that water held at bay behind it, with the pessimist in me waiting for that single crack that's going to send thousands of pounds of pressure washing down over me.

And what I'm really hoping is that this is only a 2-day migraine.  Because tomorrow, I'm supposed to be contest master for Town North, and I owe it to them to do it well, and help them have a smooth, successful contest.  The last thing they need is death-warmed-over trying to trudge her way through the event, praying she just doesn't barf on the audience.  (Isn't that a nice image?)

I wish I knew what was causing these.  I'm seriously considering upping my dosage of Topamax in the morning to the full "therapeutic" dosage of 50mg morning and night, rather than the 25mg in the morning I've been doing.  My MD told me to do that if the migraines started up ... so perhaps that's what I'll do.  Anyway ... if you've read this far, thanks for listening.  I've gotten a couple emails from people who have stumbled onto my blog via web searches, and have asked for continuining updates to my migraine saga ... so there you go - there's the latest in the ongoing battle.

Migraines: 2.  Angie: 0.

How about those migraines?

Seeing as how I blogged about the "the battle of my migraines" as it ensued over the last two months, I feel as if I should post a bit of a follow-up ... since I just had one with my doctor.

Last week, while in Phoenix, I began the fourth week of Topamax preventative drug therapy, which meant a final step up in dosage to the 50mg, twice-a-day, recommended therapeutic level.  You may remember from earlier posts that I had to ease into taking this medication, moving from 25mg to 50mg to 75 mg to 100mg over the course of a 4-week span.

It was around the 9th or 10th day of therapy that the daily migraines finally stopped.  Sometime in the third week, I began to feel like myself again, like we really had it under control.  This medication is truly a miracle!  For anyone out there who is battling migraines like me, I strongly recommend you talk with your doctor about this drug.  But during the 4th week, the increased dosage led to some really fun side effects, and that's why my doctor and I talked about on Tuesday when I saw him for my scheduled check-up.

It appears that the dosing of 75mg daily might just be right for me right now.  At 100mg a day, I was having symptoms of what he described as "metabolic acidosis" or lowered bicarbonate levels in the blood.  It's a known potential (serious) side-effect of Topamax, and it's something your doctor has to monitor you for when you're on the medication.  Basically, my whole body was becoming too acidic.

We won't know for sure if that's what it was until he gets the results of the blood test back (yeah, Tuesday was fun, not only did I get my weekly allergy shot in my left arm, but they drew blood from my right ... two needles in one day ... ugh!) but he says the symptoms were just about right.

• I was horribly, terribly thirsty.  I simply couldn't drink enough water.
• I was having bad muscle spasms and cramps, especially in my back, neck, and sides, and they'd get more severe as the day progressed.
• I was extremely hungry - which was weird, because during weeks 2 and 3, I had no appetite.
• I was experiencing tightness in my chest, which actually led Jim and I to slip out of the Convention in Phoenix last week to find a pharmacy so I could have my blood pressure checked.  (For the record, it was 110 over 70, on the low end of normal, but okay.)
• And my fatigue levels were just getting worse.

So my doctor's solution was pretty straight-forward: we're backing off the dosage levels to what I was taking during week 3.  I'm taking 25mg in the morning, and 50mg at night.  And within just two days, those nasty "acidosis" side-effects are almost gone.  Looks like it did the trick!  (The headache I had today wasn't a migraine ... just sheer exhaustion from two days of project workshop meetings at work.  Ouch!)

At this point, I think we've hit a reasonable equilibrium in the management of my migraines.  The Topamax seems to be doing a good job of preventing them.  Oh, when I think back to how much daily pain I was in, when I suffered through the chains of headaches, one right after the other, I am so immensely grateful for every pain-free moment now!  The remaining side-effects of the Topamax are minimal and manageable.

1) Parasthesia, or tingling in my hands and feet. It's more annoying than anything else.  It feels like pins and needles, like they're falling asleep, and it comes and goes.  I also have flashes of extreme cold in my fingertips.  Again - annoying - but manageable.

2) Cognitive effects, best described as "brain fog".  I was worried about this, but I had someone tell me that as fast as my brain runs, the most this was going to do was slow me down to "normal speed".  Funny, ha ha ha.  I find I have a hard time multitasking now, where I can't focus on more than one thing at a time.  Often, if I'm at my computer working on something, and Jim asks me a question, I have to completely stop what I'm doing, turn and face him, and focus entirely on him in order to hear what he's saying.  But I'm told by others who take Topamax that this gets better after 2-3 months of being on the medication.

3) Lack of appetite, which is proving to be the most troublesome side-effect.  Back at this level of dosage, my appetite is gone again, and I'm having a hard time having any interest in food whatsoever - which is very unusual for a Flinn!  When I sit down for a meal, I have to force myself to eat anything more than just a few mouthfuls.  I've had a couple days this week where I've seen 7pm and felt absolutely awful, only to realize it's because I missed breakfast, barely ate lunch, and haven't yet had dinner.  That's something I'm going to take some responsibility about actively managing, and I must get it under control.

But these side effects are minor and are worth managing when you consider that the last Imitrex I took was on July 28th.  I haven't had a migraine severe enough to resort to heavy-hitting drugs in nearly a month.  Thank God for modern medical science!  And thank you to everyone who emailed me such sweet words of encouragement as I figured out how to get this under control.

It's really good to feel like "me" again!

Migraine meds, week 3

As the pages continue to flip on the calendar, we've moved to week #3 in my Topamax therapy.  Yesterday was my first day of 75mg, where I took 1 25mg pill in the morning and 50mg in the evening.  About twenty minutes later, I konked out.  Hard.

I had a really rough time waking up this morning.  I felt sludgy.  Groggy.  Very, very sleepy.  I'm still decaffienated - I'm not taking any chances with letting caffiene trigger a headache - so I had to do my best to just shake it off.

But I am noticing an increase in the side effects at this higher dosage.  There's noticably more numbness in my hands and feet.  It feels like pins & needles, like they fell asleep.  It kind of comes and goes, and it's more annoying than anything else.  And my appetite is definitely decreasing.  I hit the Lennox cafe for a sandwich wrap for lunch - roast turkey, lots of veggies - and I'm glad I didn't get a side order of anything with it.  It was all I could do just to finish the sandwich.

Oh, and then there's the whole searching-for-words thing.  In a staff meeting this morning, I actually said, "Allen, you might need to call whats-her-face with whosa-whatsit and tell her the project's under way."  I couldn't think of either the agent's name, or the company she's with, and that's how it came out.  And boy, did I get some straaaaaange looks from the folks sitting at that table...

On the one hand, I'm hopeful this will only be for the next few days, and then I'll get used to it.  But on the other hand, I can't help thinking, if I'm like this at 75mg, what will I be like when I hit baseline therapeutic dosage at 100mg next week?

Side effects, or constant migraine pain ... I think I'll deal with pins-and-needles and being groggy.

Quick update on my "blog-break"

I'm diggin' on this whole "blog-break" thing ... especially since I don't smoke, and therefore don't get a smoke-break ... and I'm now decaffienated, so I don't get a coffee break ... it is thusly only fair that I get a blog-break in the midst of my day.  And that will allow me to briefly jot down an update from yesterday lest I forget it all before tonight...

After work last night (Wednesday) I had the unmitigated privilege of serving as Miss Veronica's sous chef.  She broke out her new cookbook - courtesy of her Grandmother Key - and made Shepherd's Pie and Poundcake for dessert.  I continually delight in what an intelligent, sharp-witted young lady Veronica is ... but last night, she got the better of me.  The poundcake recipe calls for "exactly 12 minutes" of beating with an electric mixer.  You scrape the bowl after 6 minutes.  So, I set the timer for 6 minutes, and she got to work with the hand-held mixer I had loaned to Jim (since he's not much for having super-duper kitchen appliances).  I had the fleeting thought of "oh, poor Veronica, her arms are going to get tired, glad it's not me, and good thing she's got the stamina and determination of a child" as I settled in at the sink with the strawberries and paring knife, preparing the sliced berries for sauce.

As the timer went off six minutes later, V shuts off the mixer, sets it down, picks up the spatula, and announces, "Now it's your turn for six minutes of fun!"

I stammered and sputtered ... and then started laughing.  I mean, c'mon - what was I gonna say?  So I taught her how to slice the berries using the paring-knife-against-the-thumb technique (that my Mom taught me when I was about her age) and we traded places...

Dinner turned out to be exceptionally delicious (she was so cute, sitting at the table, after the first bite ... "I think I put in just the right amount of mustard!").

After dinner Audrey and Chris came over with paperwork for Jim to sign.  If you haven't been keeping up with Jim's blog, he's found a house, made an offer, gone through the negotiations, and they've accepted.  Last night was the contract-signing and the going-over-the-inspection-report.  Jim was tickled twelve shades of pink to discover the house had foundation repairs in 2004 that come with a transferrable lifetime warranty.

Veronica and I served up dessert to everyone - poundcake, strawberries in sauce, and cool-whip - and we all moaned with delight at how amazingly GOOD the poundcake was!  Veronica is quite the budding little chef...

Later that night I went home and assessed the damages from the power surge that hit my apartment on Tuesday.  It appears a transformer blew, and that was responsible for the power and A/C outage that had me sleeping at Jim's apartment that evening.  It also blasted past two surge suppressors to fry my 27" tv, my 20" tv, a $700 DVD player, and a $500 broadband ethernet modem.  In all, it's about $2,000 in damages.  All I can say is, thank God for renter's insurance.  I called USAA last night and started the claim process.  Less my $250 deductible, I'm now waiting to see what they're going to do for me.  In the meanwhile, I am TV-less.  Sob...

Today started off with a huge blessing - which more than makes up for the hassles of the night before - I woke up without any migraine pain!  Since I've been in so much pain for the past two-plus weeks, this is a big, huge deal.  I said it before, but I'll say it again - I won't ever, ever, ever take for granted a day without a migraine.  And it feels so good to feel like myself again!  So the new medication may be doing its job ... and that's a wonderful thing.

And on that happy note, I think I'm going to get back to work.  Tonight is going to be a busy night - we're headed over to the house Jim's made an offer on, plus three other properties, to take measurements and pictures.  Then, I start packing for our vacation - I can hardly believe we're leaving tomorrow!  I'll post more tonight about our plans ... I can't wait!

I'll never take it for granted again.

The sparse postings these past few days isn't an indicator of nothing going on.  It's simply a side-effect of these migraines.

My battle continues.  And today was really, really bad.  But tonight has been really, really good...

I woke up with a headache - no surprise - but the pain was about a 3 (on a scale of 1-10) so I got to going with my day.  I did all the right stuff: a warm shower, not too hot, a breakfast of both protein and complex carbohydrates, and minimal perfumes in the cosmetics I chose as I dressed.  But by the time I made it to the office, that pain in my head was close to a 5.

I'm trying to ration the Imitrex.  I get only 9 pills in a 30-day timeframe, so I need to save them for when the headaches are really, REALLY bad.  Now, looking back on it, I realize I should have taken one when I woke up, to stop this one dead in its tracks.

But, I didn't, and instead, I started my work day.  It was 9a when I broke down and took an Imitrex.  By 9:30, I was sitting in my office, wearing sunglasses, with my head on my desk and a cold, wet paper towel across my neck.  I was somewhere between a 7 and an 8, and fighting the urge to puke.

This is the point at which my boss walks in the door and says, "Are you okay?"  And when I reply, "No," he decides it's time to pull up a chair and have a little chat.

I have tried to explain to him how this whole migraine thing works... and he vascillates between sweelty confused supportiveness and just plain ol' frustration.  I have to fight the urge to say to him, "Trust me, man, nobody's more frustrated about my headaches than me."  In fact, when I tried to re-explain the whole thing to him today (for, like, the third time) - that I went off the beta blockers that I'd been on for 8 years so I could do the allergy shots, so I would stop having sinus infections, and that the new preventative wasn't working, and now we're switching to something else - he says to me, "Screw the allergy shots - go back on the other stuff!"  And I had to just bite my tongue... I'm doing the allergy shots so I stop having the sinus infections that knock me out of commission two to four times a year, inevitably when I'm in the midst of travel.  I'm doing it for the benefit of my employer!  And besides that, if I were to switch back to the inderal, it would take 3-4 weeks for it to get back in my system anyway - the same length of time it'll take the Topamax to work!

It wasn't but ten minutes after he left my office that I sent him an email saying I had "passed the point of functionality".  I went home and laid down for 90 minutes.  And thank God, that did the trick.  When I woke up, the Imitrex had kicked in.  I was still shaky and queasy, but the pain had receeded significantly, and I was back in the realm of being functional.

So back to work I went, in plenty of time for my big 1pm planning meeting.  And I stuck it out for the remainder of the day.  (I'm VERY proud of me...)

I don't believe I will ever, ever, ever again take for granted a day when I don't have migraine pain.  Each day that is free from this misery is truly a blessing, and I had forgotten just how bad it can be.

I'm optimistic that things might just be on an up-swing.  My head has been feeling better and better as the evening has progressed, and I've been feeling pretty normal since about 7pm.  I'm hoping this is a sign that the Topamax is starting to work!

Speaking of which, tomorrow marks the start of my second week, which is when the dosage steps up from 25mg at night to 25mg at morning and 25mg at night.  We'll see what happens with the side-effects ... should be interesting.  (C'mon, weight loss!!!)

I'm just really ready for more days where I feel as good as I do tonight!

Me versus the migraines...

I haven't blogged since Wednesday's appointment with my MD, the latest salvo in the war between me and my migraines ... but we are making some progress.

My doctor pretty much concluded that the new preventative he gave me - Verapamil - wasn't doing a darn thing.  My body was acting and reacting exactly as it did some 8 years ago, before I started taking meds to prevent my migraines from happening ... where the headaches would come in clusters over a couple of days.  Four or five days of headaches, followed by two or three days of pain-free bliss ... before they started all over again.

So, he decided it's time to try something new.  He prescribed me Imitrex to deal with the migraines when they do happen.  I wasn't happy with the side-effects when I first took it several years back, but I was reminded that I was also 45lbs heavier at the time ... so I was willing to give it another try.

But he also felt strongly that I needed to be on something to prevent the migraines, or at least reduce their frequency.  He said "well, there's one thing we can try..." but he wouldn't make eye contact with me as he said it.  So I asked, "What are the side effects?"  After a moment's hesitation, he said, "Weight gain."

Uh, no.  Try again.  I'm working too hard to drop this final 20lbs.  There's got to be something else.

And yeah, there is.  So he prescribed me something called Topamax.  I'm going to ease onto it over four weeks by taking it once at night for a week, twice a day for the second week, once at lunch and two at night for the third week, and then two twice a day during week four - which is apparently the baseline therapeutic dosage.

Side effects of this drug?  Oh, let's see ... try weight loss.  Yeah.  Some docs are actually using this drug to help patients lose weight!  Ding ding ding ...

The major negative side effect is fatigue and that it can impact your concentration.  It's supposed to get better after the first couple weeks.

So ... I've started the Topamax.  It will be the 3-4 week mark before we see a difference, and it will be 2-3 months before it reaches full strength ... but I'm on the right path.  And in the meanwhile, I've discovered that the Imitrex - combined with something he gave me for the nausea that comes with my headaches (Raglan) - does a pretty good job in corralling the headaches and making them mostly manageable.

I'm in for a rough couple of weeks, but I can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  Here's to better living through chemistry, and the hopes that this combo will work for my migraines!

Third migraine in four days

I'm so ridiculously frustrated right now.  The title of this post says it all: I've got my third migraine in four days.  I don't know what's causing them ... and I'm about at the end of my rope.

I was fine this morning ... great at work ... and around 1pm, I started with the floaty spots and the tingly lips.  And by 1:45, the stabbing pain was taking over the entire left side of my head.  At 2:30, I called Jim and asked him to drive me home.  (My Explorer is still sitting in the Lennox parking garage.)

This is, by far, the worst migraine I've had in a very long time.  The Fiorinal is barely touching it.  I've taken a second dose, and I still feel like my head is caving in.

The good news is that I managed to move up my doctor's appointment to tomorrow afternoon at 2:30.  Even if he's running behind (which he ALWAYS is) I should still be out of there in plenty of time for Jim's debut at the Improv.  (I may be stoned that night, but I WILL BE THERE ...)

On the other hand, I was supposed to go mountain biking with Audrey this afternoon - plans that got entirely scrapped since I can't hardly hold my head up - after months of the trails being unrideable, once they finally dry out, now my head won't cooperate.  I threw a bit of a temper tantrum; it wasn't terribly attractive ...

Anyway ... enough of my whining.  Just consider this an update.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that my MD is helpful tomorrow, and offers up some kind of solution.  My big concern now is whether I'll be functional in the morning.  I really, really need to put in time at the office tomorrow morning.

Here's hoping tomorrow dawns clear & migraine-free ... at least for a few hours.

The curtain has parted...

I am exceptionally blessed by good health, and that's something I have to remind myself of on a very regular basis.  I have issues with my sinuses, related to allergies, and I have migraine headaches.  Other than that, I'm really VERY healthy.

But my migraines ... oh, my migraines ...

I believe that people who don't get migraines don't "get" migraines.  Until you've experienced one, you really can't understand how utterly debilitating they are.

I was 12 when they started ... to be honest, at the onset of puberty.  My mother suspected I'd develop them - she has them, a number of my maternal aunts have them - and she was prepared.  A trip to my military MD resulted in two tests - an EEG and a CT scan - to rule out brain tumors and epilepsy.  (Standard military procedure.)  In the end, they confirmed her diagnosis, and my long battle with migraines began.

Now, I don't get them nearly as bad as some people do.  Not once have I ever considered giving myself shots in order to take care of my migraines.  But I've been taken to the emergency room with one before.  I've tried any number of different medications.  And 18 years later, I have as much trouble with them as I did when I was 12.

We've isolated a bunch of my triggers, and I avoid what I can.  MSG can kick off my migraines.  So, to a large extent, I avoid foods laden with MSG.  Every once in a while, though, I'll eat something I didn't realize contains it - and I nearly always pay for it with a bad headache.  Sulfides can trigger my migraines.  Which means I have to avoid red wine and a lot of processed foods.  (Red wine is a guaranteed trigger for my headaches.  GUARANTEED.)

I don't have problems with cheese or chocolate, which is great.  And in small amounts, caffiene isn't a migraine trigger for me.  Large amounts, it absolutely is.  But I can handle 2 caffienated drinks a day without problems.

Dehydration is a guaranteed trigger.  In fact, that's what wound me up in the emergency room.  Summer in El Paso, and I wasn't drinking the H2O like I should.  It took an IV drip and good IV meds to kick that particular headache.  And now, I guzzle water year-round like it's going out of style.

But there are some triggers I know about but can't do anything to avoid: sunlight, stress, sleep, and hormones.

Sunlight: if I get too much or not enough, it can kick one off for me.  I try to balance this out during the summertime when we're spending a lot of time outdoors, but in the winter, there's not much I can do about not getting enough sunlight.

Stress: when my stress levels get too high, it's almost a guarantee I'll get a migraine.

Sleep: either too much, or not enough will do it to me.  If my sleep patterns get thrown off, I usually get a headache within a day or two.

And hormones: it's almost like clockwork ... I get a migraine every 4 weeks.  Not a darn thing I can do about it.

For those final four triggers, each one really ties back to brain chemistry and the levels of seratonin rattling around in my brain.  Sun, stress, and sleep all directly impact that, and with the hormones, I have no clue what's going on inside my body when that happens ... but it's all about different levels of brain chemistry.

Why am I rambling about all this?  Because I just woke up from a 6 hour nap, and the curtain has finally parted ... and the migraine I've had for the last 24 hours is starting to dissipate.  The second migraine, in fact, in just as many days.

My migraines have been under control - mostly - for the past several years.  My MD put me on a daily dose of beta blockers back in 1995 to prevent my migraines from ever occurring.  That worked pretty well to eliminate the multi-day headaches I was battling at the time.  But three months ago, when we decided to start allergy shots to hopefully deal - once and for all - with the recurrent sinus infections I fight, it turns out you can't take allergy shots if you're on beta blockers.  Something about how beta blockers block the adrenaline response, and if I ever had a bad reaction, they wouldn't be able to use epinephrine to counteract an allergic reaction and I could die.

Dying is not so good.  So I went back to my MD and he switched me to a channel blocker, rather than beta blockers.  (For those geekly types out there, I took Inderal - or Propranolol - for years.  Now, I'm on Verapamil, which is a calcium channel blocker.)

It was a rough 6 weeks transitioning onto the Verapamil.  I had clusters of these headaches as my body pushed out 7 years worth of Inderal and got used to the new stuff.  It was pretty bad... but I fought through it because I really, really want to do the allergy shots.

And then I thought it had all evened out.  I actually really like the way I feel on Verapamil much better than on the Inderal.  I hadn't realized how sluggish the Inderal was making me ... my energy levels are much, much higher (as is my heart rate, which was around 55bpm on the Inderal).  So, that's all good.

But ... this weekend ... on Saturday night, in the midst of game-playing with Jim's family, I started with the floaty spots, the tingling fingers and lips, and the stabbing pain on one side of my head.  A migraine was starting.  So, I quickly downed two Fiorinal (which is the aspirin-and-barbiturate cocktail I take when a migraine actually starts ... designed to block the pain more than anything else) and took it easy.

I was immensely grateful when I woke on Sunday and the headache was gone.

But it was on the drive back to town, around about 5:30p, that it started again.  More spots.  More tingling.  More pain.  So, we stopped for dinner, I took more meds, and I turned into a zombie for the rest of the night.

And when I woke up this morning, it was still here.

What's a girl to do?!?  I had an important meeting at the office, which I could have done by teleconference but I thought it would be a better move for me to be present ... so I showered and dressed and arrived just in time for QMI.  I gave my report, stuck around for the entirety of the meeting, and then left as soon as it was done.  (Amidst, of course, a chorus of "You don't look so good, Angie!")

I came home, took more Fiorinal, and crawled into bed.  And didn't wake up until my Dad called at a little before 5.

I now have what I typically call a "migraine hangover".  The worst of the pain is gone, and I can hold my head upright without feeling like I'm going to puke.  But there's a bit of a fog in my head still ... sort of hanging around my periphery ... and it's the kind of thing where if I push too hard, the headache will come back in full-force.  Or, I can take it easy and rest, and maybe, just maybe, I'm done with this particular migraine.

I'm so frustrated ... you'd think after 18 years of this I'd be over my frustration, right?  And believe me, I know that migraines are "just migraines" and it could be SO much worse.  I have an aunt with MS.  Another with what I think is lupus.  My mother will battle Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome for the rest of her life.  I am incredibly blessed that the ONLY thing I have to fight is these headaches.

But I'm on the books to meet with my MD on August 7th to talk about my migraines, the new meds, and where we stand.  He isn't going to be happy that I've almost blown through a supply of 30 Fiorinal in a 3-month timespan.  But maybe we can find something else to try that will get this under control, and keep me functional, without interfering with the allergy shots.

I just feel like such a jerk when I get a migraine.  Not the pain I'm in, but the hassle I'm causing everyone around me.  Jim knew what he was getting into with me - 8+ years of friendship means he knew all about my migraines - but I still hate telling him that one is starting.  It inevitably messes up our plans for the day, and I'm absolutely NO fun to be around.  But he's so lovingly supportive of me ... nobody gives a head rub like my Jim does.

If anyone out there has any other ideas on how to conquer these things, I'd love to hear 'em.  For the record, I've tried Imitrex, but it makes my heart go all wiggy.  I'd rather deal with a migraine than a racing, irregular heartbeat.  <cringe>

In the meanwhile, I'm going to call for pizza - not the healthiest choice, but I have nothing quick in the fridge, I'm not up to prep work, and I don't wanna leave my darkened apartment just yet - and settle in with my book.

But that's a whole different post...