I Hear You Knocking But You Can’t Come In

I suffer from migraines. Have I said before that I get migraines? I do tend to repeat myself. Well on Friday I had a doozy.  I had been out for dinner with one set of friends and was supposed to meet others for drinks, when I hit a brick wall tiredness-wise, and since I was meeting everyone for breakfast the next day I thought I’d just go home and go to bed early. This was a good call. The bus terminated before my stop, always annoying, but I could deal with a 20 min walk. Except…uh oh…I have a blind spot in my vision. It’s from the car lights right? It’s not a migraine. No way it would be a migraine right now…oh yeah, shit, it is. And so I stumbled home like a blind person, my right arm sort of out in front of me, so I didn’t run into anything. It’s such a strange experience, these flashing lights going off, obscuring your vision. It’s also scary, seeing as people would appear in front of me almost out of nowhere and startle me. Plus, crossing the road was interesting. Is there a car? I can’t tell you how close I came to walking under a bus. I hugged the wall mostly. I must have looked like I was drunk. Anyway, I got home in one piece and fell into bed, and after fighting with the smoke alarm which was making stupid beeping noises, I slept the headache away. Sleep is basically the only thing that helps, although Excedrin Migraine pills are good too.

I can remember the first time I had a migraine. I was maybe 15, and in history class. I remember getting the aura, but not knowing that’s what it was, and then later feeling sick, and then the pain. Oh. My. God. What the hell was this? I had never felt a headache like it. After that they showed up pretty regularly, at one point at least once a month, sometimes I’d get a cluster of them within a few days. Just when I’d think I was getting over it I’d get the hideous squiggly lines across my eyes and go shut my self in a dark room in the hopes I could sleep it off.

And then there was the second wave a migraines. The new kind. During my second year of university, when I was in America, I woke up one morning and threw up. And threw up…and on and on, and my head was killing me. My roommate was kind enough to take me to the medical centre, where a nurse stuck a needle in my hip with stuff to stop me vomiting, or maybe just to take my mind off the pain because again: Oh. My. God. That hurt. Needles in hips? EVIL. But I did stop being sick, and they did give me some awesome drugs.  And ever since then I’ll wake up every now and then with a screaming head and the need to puke my guts up.

So yeah, migraines suck, to put it mildly. Not only is there pain, and puking, I also get an increased chance of stroke. Woot! I don’t get them as often as I used to, which is something. And usually if I do, it’s my own fault, for not taking care of myself better. If I skip meals, if I don’t get enough sleep, if I have too much sleep, if I’m feeling stressed out, I can’t be surprised if one comes a knocking. But hopefully not for a good while now, ok head?