wary of taking the meds

Days like today I'm not sure what to do. My Zonegran seems to have worked in many ways, one of which is this: it slows the overall Migraine attack process, often stopping it in its tracks and making one stage of the headache linger for hours until the slight pain goes away, when formerly that stage may've escalated quickly and turned into a really painful headache.

This is problematic in that sometimes, perhaps 20% of the time, the headache does rear its ugly head in the most painful of ways, and it makes up for lost time. All the moments the really severe pain delayed in setting in...

(NOTE FROM OCT. 2007--I STOPPED WRITING THIS 6 MONTHS AGO. NOT SURE WHY NOW. THOUGHT I WOULD HIT "PUBLISH POST" ANYHOW!)

Is it working?

When my loving, good-natured friends and family ask me about my healthcare regimen, I try to remain energetic as I list the things I ingest each day, the activities I try to do to keep the Migraine attacks at bay.

I take 400 mg of Vitamin B2 each day--that's about 23,000 times the recommended daily allowance. Ha! I read a study online linking that daily intake over a long period of time to an overall decrease in Migraine frequency. I started taking the vitamins each day not because of this googled study but because of my neurologist's very strong suggestion--the search is what came after his suggestion.

Along with the B2 is a capsule of Magnesium. 500mg of it, to be exact.

Added to that daily list of fun things to swallow?

• 300 mg of Zonegran/Zonisamide (which is now finally generic, I suppose, for the price went down from $100 for a month's supply to about $40 at my local grocery store pharmacy)
• Omega-3 (fish oil)
• 20 mg Amitriptyline (Elavil), which I was on long ago, got off, and just recently re-started

I go to my massage therapist/cranial sacral therapist whenever I can afford it. Unfortunately, this hasn't been too frequent of late. For my last few appointments, she hasn't done much cranial sacral therapy because my visits have been right after a Migraine headache and she is unwilling to manipulate my cranium at all and possibly trigger another attack. (Thank you, wonderful woman.)

Of course exercise is always recommended, as long as I don't overexert or overheat myself and get a Migraine that way. I definitely don't get as much exercise as I should; this I know.

Minimizing exposure to triggers is something I've gotten quite deft at; managing stress is another lifelong issue I'll never master, but I am coping pretty well (for me).

So back to the subject of this entry. Back to the question that I am always faced with as soon as I tell my friends and family about my lifestyle changes, my new (or old) medications, that new trick I read about in a medical journal:

"So, is it working?"

I feel like I don't know what it is that's doing the trick--or not doing the trick--anymore. I have a so many elements in my life, so many chemicals running through my system. How am I to tell which one is the one that's working? Is it their complicated, complex relationship with one another that does the trick, at least most of the time? If I removed just one of the pills each day, would the whole system come grinding to a halt and leave me in pain, or would I feel even better than I do now?

I am not in a well-controlled scientific study. I cannot aptly determine which medication is the one that's working best for me. Part of me thinks that my body has gotten a bit better on its own over the years and that I could cut out all this expensive treatment and get just as many awful Migraines as I do now--and have just as many gloriously pain-free days as I do now.

But most of me is pretty sure the medication's helping. That I need the neurologist's words, reassurance, and comfort. That this disease is certainly way bigger than I and that I may never know what it is, exactly that's working--or how well it's working at all.

So my answer to family and friends remains the same. I don't know. I just don't know.
Were this a personal essay, one with sparks of humor and hints of charming self-deprecation, my answer would provide you with an amazing conclusion that would make sense of it all.

But it's just not the case here. I just don't know what's helping, and I'm too scared to take something away to find out if it hurts.

movin' on up (and over)

Last night--or was it very early this morning?--I woke up in a haze and stumbled to the bathroom, suddenly realizing I was parched. I filled my glass up with water and had several gulps.

It wasn't until I was headed back to my bedroom that I registered the pain that had been with me for the preceding little while, the pain that had presumably helped to awaken me. It was as if a hollowed out section of my head had been left gaping right there in the middle of my forehead. It felt like my Migraine pain, but it was so strangely located for me (mine are on the left side of my head 90% of the time, the right side roughly 10% of the time, and in the neck and back of the head) that I didn't know what to make of it.

I felt as if I had a strange, dull, open wound in my forehead. It was throbbing and had been stuffed with cotton. The pain wasn't horrible enough that I couldn't sleep--probably about a 6 on the 10-point scale.

I was so exhausted and out of it that I went back to bed.

I didn't remember the episode until this evening, about an hour ago when the same pain made its slow return in the same place, but this time with little tiny wings extending on each side of the imagined hole, the wings flapping lightly and ever-so-painfully above each eyebrow.

Time, I say, for drugs.

Time, I say, for bed.

It's disconcerting for the pain to have moved, to have migrated again. As much as I don't like the Migraine headaches that have made their home in my skull for the last 14 years, there's a twisted sense of comfort in expecting where they'll be, knowing where they'll show up and usually knowing when. For the Migraine to appear in a morphed form in another room in the house is strange, unfamiliar.

Best to evict it and have it make its slothful return in a few days to where it belongs, tucked in a corner behind my left eyeball.

You've got an hour to get out of here, headache, or I'm throwing you out on the lawn.

twitch twitch twitcheroo

My left eyelid has been twitching for three days straight.

It's really quite obnoxious. I keep thinking it's linked to some sort of stress I have, some underlying thing I should be worried about.

But I don't know that there's any HUGE thing I need to be worried about.
Perhaps the fact that I'm concerned, however distantly and vaguely, about being concerned about stress I may not even have, is a concern in itself.

Hmm.

Twitch.

Twitch.

Twitchtwitchtwitch.

Why won't it go away?!