36 hours later, pretty consistent Advil dosing, two doses of the "good stuff" (at around $35 dollars a pill), spending 18 hours in bed, and having successfully packed my head in ice I feel better! No more vice grip tension on my head and neck. No more feeling like I'm going to puke if I roll over too fast. No more hungry but I don't dare eat. No more little floating dots in my vision. Relief!
I have had migraines since I was little. Mom and Dad finally hauled me off to a doctor before I was even in grade school because I would cry and scream until I puked and they didn't know why. I still vividly remember the EMG they did. I had hair past my waist and they goobered it with sticky paste to make the electrodes stick. Pulling these out of my hair gave me a headache. I use to get two to three headaches a week. Everyone thought it was weird that I had headaches and I got made fun of if I complained of a headache. So instead, I played sports, went to school, etc with headaches to avoid people thinking I was a wimp. I also remember missing my own birthday party because I had a migraine. I didn't have a lot of birthday parties and then I finally had one planned for me and it had to be canceled b/c I had a headache. I also remember my senior year not going to the national science fair and I still blame the nasty headache I had the day of the regional contest. I was so sick I'm pretty sure I had no clue what I was saying to the judges when they were asking me about my project. I was puking in between judges, I do remember that.
When I was in 8th grade I finally went to a Neurologist. She was the first doctor who actually paid attention and diagnosed me as having true "migraines". She tried placing me on a beta blocker. I got teased for that because when I first started the medication I had to record my heart rate and such b/c a beta blocker can decrease yoru heart rate. Not cool when you are trying to play high school basketball and more fodder for fun for the other kids. The beta blocker didn't work but she finally gave me medications other than Advil or Motrin to treat the headaches when I did get them. The first medication I used gave me fabulous relief but required an injection. Dad use to always give them to me...they made me a bit sweaty, made my heart race a bit, and made my face tingle for a little bit but the headache would go away.
Imitrex was pretty much the only thing that worked but it also had a high rebound headache rate (often get another headache within 24 hours of the first one going away). It was what was available so I used it. It was what I was still using when I went off to college. But I had never given myself the injection. Freaked my roommate out when I told her about my headaches and asked her if she could do them for me. Yeah, freaked her out enough she asked to move at the semester (I was happy though, we had way opposite day night schedules and we were friends when we graduated). A very grumpy nurse made me feel really guilty about needing her to give me my injections so one day when I had one I finally said the hell with it and gave myself my own shot. Yeah, even a nurse made me feel bad about having headaches.
The good news is there are now better meds on the market. I currently use one called Maxalt. I first used it as an oral mediation. I tried it as a nasal spray but that didn't work so wel with the nausea the headache itself already caused. It now comes in a tablet which dissolves under my tongue. The other good news is that as I have gotten older the frequency of my headaches has become less. Throughout college and grad school I would get headaches once or twice a week. The problem in grad school as the associated tension headaches with the migraine that I would get from working through the headaches due to the sheer need to not lag behind in studies. Now, I get a really bad headache maybe once every 3 to 4 months. I have smaller headaches here and there but they responde to rest, advil, etc. The big ones like what I just had don't happen very often. Thank GOD!
Migraines are a unique headache. A few of my readers have the ill pleasure of knowing what they are like. You can have painful migraines or painfree migraines. Funky uh? I get the painful ones but there are individuals who get ocular only migraines resulting in visual disturbances but no pain. I get mild auras (that's the scientific term) with my headaches...I see little lights that I swear I could reach out and grab. Like little fireflies flying just inches in front of my face. I also get nauseous. I don't puke anymore. I learned to hate puking early in life and have mentally steeled myself against puking with the exception of extreme cases (Christmas stomach flu of '06 and a long night at Ocktoberfest come to mind). The nausea makes doing anything quickly hard though. The pain is unilateral, only one side of my head. Mine is typically my right side but occasionally will affect my left. The pain goes from directly behind my eyeball, around my ear, the the base of my skull. Pressure on these points feels good, if I could attach a milking device or squeeze me head for hours on end it would always help. Ice, even better! Light is painful to the site. Being hot is not comfortable with a migraine.
So, what did I do the last several days with this headache. I felt it a bit on Thursday and even mentioned to the physical therapist that maybe I should have him work on my neck to loosen it up a bit and such. I got busy and didn't get to that. By the time I went to bed on Thursday night I had a pretty good headache. It took my four advil and crawled into bed with my ice pack. I woke up on Friday morning and it wasn't gone but I had to go to work. I went to work and was happy to find out we only had the one surgical case which I needed to assist in. I had presumably blocked my clinic calendar all day because I was to help with a clavicle fracture and an ACL reconstruction. I was excited to think i could come home early and huddle in the dark with an ice pack around my head. You can imagine my frustration when I came downstairs to find out no block was there for my clinic and someone had scheduled two patients, one at 1 pm and one at 3 pm. I stayed at work, i saw my patients. The Physical Therapist worked on my neck pain and tension since I was there.
I got home and took my Maxalt, returned a phone call to my aunt, and went to bed at 6 pm. I woke up around 9:30 and the headache had subsided a bit. I decided it best to just stay in bed instead of getting and then going back to bed a few hours later. Figured since it wasn't gone all the way it was best. I woke up at 1:30 and it was still there. I got up and took another Maxalt. At 6:30 am I woke up and STILL had a headache. At 7:30 I crawled out of bed and took four advil before coming downstairs. I got several ice packs out of the freezer and propped them around my head and neck. I also drank a cup of coffee to speed up the advil (did you know that excedrin migraine is the same as ibuprofen except it has concentrated caffeine in it?). At 9:30 I was finally feeling a bit better but was hungry and tired. I ate a cup of apple sauce and a banana and curled up in bed around 10:30. I finally was able to sleep.
I'm up, showered, and headache free now. Migraines and the meds for them leave behind a little hang over effect but I can handle that. I am really hungry so I'm going to cook myself something. Then I'm going to go to work doing all the things I wanted to do last night and today. I have new Stampin' Up toys to play with. I have Valentine Day cards I want to make. I have three new DVD's from Netflix to keep me company. So now that my head is better I'm going to do something to spoil the rest of me...crafty stuff! Yeah!
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