what's so bad about feeling good?

Well, there's really not so much bad about feeling good. Now the mission is to find what's good about feeling bad, I guess.

The rain came in yesterday and continued without ceasing for hours upon hours....In fact, it's 1:15 AM early Sunday morning, meaning that, as far as I know, it has rained every moment of the weekend.

The mood I was in while writing that last post seems so far away from me! I'm not feeling awful, but I did have a rough day chock full o' migraine pain that would not dissipate despite two Imitrex tablets and a Naproxen sodium pill. Alas. The last few days were so wonderful, though--I think I have more of those to come. I'm going to try to make a point of being more creative, productive, and active on the days I feel well.

This evening I did get some q.t. in with friends and a certain little week-old baby I know. That does a body good. (Pass it on.)

feeling like myself again

The other day I was in an excellent mood, flitting about the house getting things done, rearranging furniture, etc. As I had faintly suspected, this sense of euphoria and increased energy was a signal that the prodrome had set in. For a couple of days (and evenings) after that awesome night, I was pretty laid up and out of commission with Migraine.

Late in the evening on Tuesday--say, around eleven or so--I started to feel okay. I'd already missed a close friend's birthday get-together so felt a bit bummed out. Mainly I was relieved, though--the pain was lifting and I had a little bout of energy. I cleaned & rearranged my jewelry. I wrote a letter. I read a chunk of my book.

Wednesday I babysat for a few hours and, despite not having slept well the night before, I was happy and energetic with the kids. We played outside and I didn't once feel the need to lie down and rest. (A few weeks back, the six-year-old walked up to me shortly after I arrived at his house to sit. "Are you sleepy?" he asked me. "Um...not right now, no. Why did you ask that?" "Cause you're always sleepy," he replied in a sad voice. Wow. It's not as if I didn't know I felt run-down pretty often--it's that I'd thought that, in general, the kids saw me as an energetic, healthy person, not an "always tired" type. Hmm.)

Now it's Saturday at one in the morning, and my good mood, good spirits, and good health are all still going strong. I survived a big Thanksgiving Day (and night!) with some good friends and didn't get a migraine (!). Hours ago, the sunny and warm day turned into a chilly, rainy one, and my head didn't freak out as it usually would. Yesterday evening I had a few drinks and didn't wake up feeling extra tired or migrainey.


I've been engaging in activities I used to love but that have since fallen by the wayside due to my blah-ish indifference or my schedule--when so much of my time is taken up by Migraine, my non-sick times aren't usually spent on my goofy old habits. Here's a list of a few things I used to love doing but had kind of stopped until very recently (VERY recently):

1. played my piano keyboard, practicing notes and playing songs badly (I don't exactly have a formal piano education and can't play with two hands any better than a preschooler might--but it's fun!)
2. created many a paper craft, including a hand turkey, cut-out scissor crafts, and paper dolls
3. borrowed J.'s guitar and whipped out my cousin Bev's thirty-plus-year-old Mel Bay guitar instructional books
4. write letters to friends
5. hung lots of art & photos on the walls, art that had been sitting around for MONTHS waiting to be displayed
6. continued compiling my favorite photographs for a little photography portfolio
7. cleaned my silver jewelry (and some of the fake stuff, too, which appeared shiny and new again for about ten minutes before it re-tarnished--what gives?)
8. took a few long walks
9. snapped some photos of my neighborhood
10. made a cake (from the box--thank you, Duncan Hines)
11. repaired a beaded necklace my friend's cat chewed on and messed up approximately THREE YEARS AGO (it's been sitting around in plastic wrap since that fateful day I found it all torn up)
12. burned a CD of Costa Rica photos for my friend Rosa, a CD she requested I make in January 2008
13. sent a postcard to my cousin Laura--a postcard I bought and wrote in July 2007

+ more!!

Look at me, look at me! Now's the time when I indulge in a little fantasy about how this is how life will be from here on out. My migraines are gone for good, you see, and I'll NEVER BE SICK AGAIN. Awesome, huh? ;)

I got the kreativ* blogger award

More than three weeks ago, the very kind MaxJerz from Rhymes With Migraine sent me an email letting me know she'd awarded me with a little something called the Kreativ* Blogger Award. I was flattered, to say the least--it's strange to realize that a blog that I started to help myself has benefited others, even if it's just a sense of camaraderie we get. (For those of you who don't know it, the migraine bloggers tend to read each others' stuff and it really helps. In fact, any personal writings about chronic illness, chronic pain, and/or disability quite often benefit those who stumble across them, those who may've thought they were the only ones out there dealing with their health issues.

Anyway. I haven't done my duty as an award recepient yet, and now I'm only going to fulfill my duties halfway. You see, it was requested that I not only write down six things that make me happy--I am also to award six other bloggers with this "kreativ blogger" distinction. This part smacks of chain letter, and I just can't do it. But I will say THANKS to MaxJerz and list a handful of things that make me happy.

1. baby kittens (I know, I know--could I be more of a wuss?)
2. being engrossed in a book
3. opening my mailbox to find a real, handwritten letter addressed to ME
4. closing my mailbox after stuffing it with real, handwritten letters to friends & family (This doesn't happen as often as it used to, but I'm trying to get back in the habit.)
5. hanging out with my family
6. laughing attacks

I could probably list 4,521,984 more things, but I'll leave it at six. Here's a shout-out to the beau and my friends: you make me very happy, too.

*I do not and will not endorse the deliberate misspelling of the word "creative." Even writing "kreativ" makes me cringe. "Writing 'kreativ'" would appear on the list of things that do NOT make me happy.

stinky stinks

Yes, we know that strange smells bother many migraineurs, and I am but one of that many. More often than not, smells really get on my nerves but don't trigger migraine attacks. Occasionally, though, the smells are so strong or my brain's state is such that one sniff of an undesirable fragrance can spin the migraine gears into action, bringing about a bad attack.

As much as I dislike cigarette smoke, I appreciate one thing about it: I can tell when it's coming. You can see the smoke, and you can (usually) walk away. I anticipate the smell and ready my brain for it; often I pull my hands up to my face and create a makeshift mask from the loosened sleeve of my shirt or jacket. I can walk away, or I can ask the smokers (if they're friends) to get clear away from me. In the grocery store, I can create a wide berth between me and the fish counter; if I catch a whiff of a strongly cologned shopper, I can relocate to another aisle and leave my nose in freedom.

What is irking me at the moment is the awful, horrible, plasticky chemical smell that seems to have taken root in my nostrils and my mouth, seemingly leaving my tongue with a gross coating, as if I'd stuck my tongue out and colored it with a Sharpie and topped it all off with a dash of turpentine.

I bought a spool of new CD-Rs and decided to take a blank one out and finally make the photo CD for a friend who asked for it ten months ago. (Lazy Jane strikes again!) The packaging was a bit hard to get off, but once I removed the crinkly plastic, I was ready to lift the cakebox-like lid off the CDs and grab a blank one.

The smell wafted toward--nay, slapped!--my face. The stench of melted plastic, old permanent marker ink, manufacturing chemicals, nastiness. Yech. I replaced the lid immediately after removing a CD, but it was too late. The smell now lives on and in me!

Do you ever feel as if a smell has stuck with you, that there's nothing you can do to rid your body of the scent? This happens to me all the time, but when I mention it to others, they don't seem to know what the heck I'm talking about. I could leave the office right now and step outside, but the smell of these CD-Rs would still linger in my nostrils and in my mouth. It takes a while for me to shake smells away, to have them leave my system. Sniffing a strong perfume is not something that lasts just a moment for me--the smell takes up residence in my nose and mouth and won't leave me for quite a while.

Anyone else experience this phenomenon?

curses to you, prodrome--bearer of false hopes!

I've been having a rough time of it lately, migraine-wise. This is the tenth day this month that my life has been moderately to severely affected by Migraine attacks. (Since attacks can last up to 3 days--and sometimes more--it's hard to say how many attacks I had this month. It's simpler and more significant, perhaps, to say how many days were affected by Migraine.)

Ick.

Last night I started to feel wonderful. Just wonderful. I had more energy than I remember having for weeks. I dashed around the house, firing off emails and reorganizing jewelry and hanging up all the posters and artwork that's been waiting to be hung for months. La di da! Janet felt awesome. A little voice in the back of my head warned that this could be the euphoria that sometimes accompanies my prodrome. I thought to myself, "Self, you're being overdramatic. There's no way another migraine could be coming along--you JUST got over one this afternoon! This is what it's like to feel normal! Enjoy it."

This morning, Tuesday, I awoke a bit earlier than usual to meet with my friend C. for his birthday--we had breakfast together. While sitting at the restaurant, I felt that old familiar feeling behind my right eye and in the left side of my sinus cavity. Ignore it, ignore it. I had a few tiny cups of coffee (amounting to 20 oz. total, probably). Drank a couple glasses of water. Ate some breakfast. C. asked if I'd be at his birthday get-together that evening, a roller skating party (hearkening back to elementary school party traditions). "Yeah, I don't see why not!" I said in a cheerful voice; in the meantime, I could feel my head throbbing and figured I might be in for yet another day in bed.

It's been seven hours since I had breakfast, and the pain is a little bit worse than before, but not horrible by any means. What I don't like is the way it teases, the way I think I'm feeling great and then suddenly, harshly realize I'm wrong as I move too fast or bend down to pick something up. I don't want to miss another party. I don't want to miss out. I want to feel the way I did last night.

For now I'll continue spending time by myself. I can't take any triptans since I already took 'em to the limit this week, and Naproxen doesn't do much good for me. I'll just wait. And hope for a better day tomorrow.

great, overarching NY Times article on Migraine

I just searched The New York Times website for any articles related to migraine. Here's what I found: a very well-written, comprehensive, and easy-to-follow article on the disease. This could be a good resource to give to coworkers or friends who are curious to know more about Migraine but might not want to read an entire book.

And speaking of books: my copy of The Migraine Brain arrived today. I think I'll start it now. Also of note? I ordered the much-talked-about Sinus Buster Migraine Headache Nasal Spray. I want to try it now and see if it's as hard to inhale as it sounds--I mean, there's a lot of PEPPER in there going up your nostrils! I'll wait 'til I have a Migraine attack, though. I'll keep you posted with feedback.

Goodnight!

my mean thought for the day

I've said before that I wouldn't wish the pain, disability, and frustration of Migraine disease on anybody. Now I'm calling myself out--I'm a big, fat liar.

I DO wish every single person in the world could have just one Migraine attack. I don't wish chronic Migraines on anyone, not even my former next-door neighbor who was inconsiderate and rude, with a tendency to party LOUDLY well into the wee hours of morning despite my asking him to shush. I don't want people to have the worry that comes with chronic migraines; I don't want anyone to frequently break plans, feel unreliable, and feel guilty for not being as active and healthy as others.

But man, oh, man. I wish people could experience an entire Migraine attack. I want those disbelievers to know for themselves that Migraine is not just a headache. I want them to feel how difficult it is to conduct any normal activity while having a Migraine. I want them to realize the disease is very real and not imagined or psychological.

Maybe I'll ask Santa for this wish this year--if he doesn't scold me for being mean-spirited and then give me a lump of coal instead.

wreck wreck wreck

Yesterday I was in a little thing I like to call a car wreck. Got hit on the driver's side and front of my car when a distracted dude ran a red light. Yeow!

My car's condition is in limbo: will it be declared totaled, or will a shop repair it and try (but fail) to restore it to its old glory? It's sitting all lonely and sad in a local tow yard. Poor baby. The whole front section of the car got knocked off--when you look at the car from the front, it looks like a burgundy colored face whose jaw has dropped clean to the ground. Surprised at something.

Various fluids of varying colors poured from the car and down the asphalt. Not sure what exploded, but it sure did leak.

To my happiness, no one was majorly injured. J., the beau, was in the passenger seat and ended up with lots of muscle strain/sprain and a headache. I hit my head on something (don't know what) and had a REGULAR HEADACHE plus some muscle straining and pain. Now I am achey but expect the feeling to go away after a few days. I hope this doesn't spur further health issues.

I don't know what the point of this post is. I feel oddly out of it. I'm used to taking Lortab as a Migraine attack rescue med now and again, but taking it for muscle aches along with this muscle relaxer makes for a very out-of-it Janet. I may well be writing nonsense here. So be it.

I can't tell you the last time I had a headache that wasn't a migraine. It was such an unfamiliar feeling: tightness all around my head, a dull ache that didn't throb or pierce. It's gone now, thank goodness, but it made me think about those who have tension headaches and NOT migraine. Recently a friend told me that she used to be one of those people who thought migraineurs were big sissies, that migraine headaches were actually just pretty bad regular headaches. Migraineurs were whiners. Wimpy whiners. But then she got her first migraine attack and finally realized she'd been wrong all that time--the pain of migraine is nothing compared to your average headache.

What if I could always have headaches like these instead of migraines? thought I. It seemed almost a luxury to have head pain that didn't distract me from life, pain that was irrefutably present but not debilitating. I'm jealous of the millions of people who don't get migraine. I'm so very jealous.

We've now reached the end of my rambling. Tomorrow I get to resume what is already another kind of headache: endless calls to insurance companies and the hospital. Wish me luck!

clean house!

Tomorrow morning, a wonderfully friendly (and highly recommended) house cleaner is coming over here. I'm so excited. She's going to clean my house from top to bottom!

Here's the sad truth, folks. I hope you don't respect me any less (assuming you respected me in the first place) and hope your judgment is not too harsh. But let me lay it all out for you: I do not clean. Really ever. I can pretty well count on two hands the number of times I've thoroughly swept my house's hardwood floors. I can count on one hand the days I've mopped the floor. (There was that 5 AM after party mopping session conducted by my friend D. and me--we had to go over the living room floor literally 7 times in one night to clean up. But it WAS a good party. We'll count that as one mopping session, however.) Once every couple of months I clean the stove, and I'll wipe the linty baseboards in my bathroom-cum-laundry room if they happen to catch my eye. Getting down on my knees to scrub hurts my back, irritates my mood, and leaves me feeling generally unwell. Even if I were entirely healthy, I can't say that I'd be a cleaner.

What I can do--if I so choose--is organize. I love shelving (alphabetizing & organizing) books, rearranging picture frames, making sure my desk is just so, and having my bed made most days. Though it doesn't often look too impressive, I like having the bathroom counter organized and fairly sparse. I like the laundry to be folded immediately after drying and put away promptly. But I do not--repeat, DO NOT--scrub and polish and scour.

I'll leave that to my maid.

Oh, I'm so excited!!! Hiring a cleaner is yet another step in my slow-moving, quite unofficial plan to remove stressors from my life that I don't really need. I was stressed out about the election--hey, I think everyone was. That's normal. I get stressed about work and try to remind myself that remaining calm is better. I get stressed about my Migraine disease but try not to let that get out of hand. These, to me, are legitimate reasons to worry once in awhile. Keeping a house clean is not.

So here's what I've done so far to help myself be less strung-out and annoyed over highly controllable things:

1. I got a dishwasher. I save myself hours of back-bendingly uncomfortable dishwashing each month. I load up the dishwasher as I use dishes, so there's never any counter mess. I love it.
2. I have started giving things I NEVER use and no longer love away to friends and on freecycle. Just a few weeks ago, some girlfriends and I had a clothing exchange party: we turned my entire house into a modest consignment store, putting different types of clothing in each room. Each of us ended up with at least a modest loot; the remaining clothes and accessories went to one of our city's wonderful thrift stores. I have posted lots of giveaway items on freecycle, ridding myself of old toaster ovens, tables, accessories, etc. I no longer need.
3. I bought one of those over-the-toilet shelving units I swore I'd never get. It's a bit weak and blocks some of the light from the window, but it has saved me lots of room. Now my bathroom cabinets aren't stuffed with crap; in fact, they're fairly organized and have stayed that way for weeks!
4. I have tried more and more to be less hard on myself for not keeping the house clean and organized all the time. Practice may not lead to perfection, but I'm getting better at not beating myself up too much for being messy and/or dirty.
5. I hired a house cleaner. And I should probably get out of this chair so I can see if there's anything else I can put away (aka hide in drawers) before her morning arrival! Wish me luck.

Out of commission

I'm on day three of a Migraine attack. It flirted around a bit on Wednesday morning and decided to move in a little after noon that day. I expected a migraine the day after election day--the deflation of all that pent-up stress and worry, the sudden rush of relief, and the election-themed shots at the bar that were such a good idea at the time.

What I didn't expect was to continue feeling this way. I've been out of commission for days now! Last week it was a cold and slight fever--this week it's migraine with slight fever. My Maxalt kicked in yesterday afternoon (day 2 of migraine) right before I went to babysit. After babysitting, I had plans to drive up to Greenville to see some friends play music, and I was pleased to still feel happy and excited about this. The Maxalt had finally kicked my migraine's butt. On the way home from the show, the left side of my face started to feel pinched and a bit numb; my vision dulled a bit. The migraine was coming back.

I woke up today with a very heavy head. Tried to rest, eat a healthy breakfast, and have plenty of liquids along with my daily herbal meds. I'd taken my triptan two days in a row (twice on Wednesday; once on Thursday), so that plan was out. Perhaps some no-impact exercise would help and would me to avoid having to take my rescue meds! I headed to the YMCA and swam laps for awhile. The water felt great, and moving around in the water distracted me from the pain a bit. Unfortunately, the visit was not an entire success: the goggles were painful to wear around my seemingly swollen head, and the water pressure wasn't doing my sinuses any favors. Afterward, my ears were killing me--I've always been sensitive to water pressure, but in recent years I've gotten earaches after swimming even if I've not gone too deep. After my YMCA adventure, I was definitely worse for the wear.

I drove home with blurry eyes and took some Lortab after all. Now I feel unpleasantly loopy, tired, and out of it. Have a big translation assignment due tomorrow that I put off at first because of my mom's visit (and the election excitement); now I'm putting it off because I am in such discomfort. I hate feeling like a slacker despite my knowing that I'm physically and mentally unable to do my best (and speediest) work right now. Still I feel bad.

move aside, CFLs--LEDs are coming in

Check this out! They're still expensive, but LEDs are slowly but surely making their way into the marketplace.

Here's my comment on the article:

As fluorescents (including CFLs) trigger vicious migraines for me and many other migraineurs, I can say I've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of household-use LEDs for quite awhile. I can't wait to use a bulb that will [at least soon] be even more energy efficient than any fluorescent bulb--and no pesky mercury worries and no barely-discernible flickering that'll trigger migraine attacks. Hallelujah!

http://themigrainegirl.blogspot.com

Just another Oct. 31

I skipped Halloween tonight. This seems pretty sad at first: I mean, I have always loved Halloween and tend to dress up each year--if you exclude a handful of early high school Halloweens when I was too cool (and too old, according to my parents) to dress up and go trick-or-treating.

I've told you a little bit about my dear friend HT before. She and I are very similar in a variety of ways--it's not just our height and Germanic looks. (What an odd non-Janet-sounding sentence. I'll keep it.) We get along well for many reasons; it helps that she is perhaps the only real-life person I know who genuinely understands what it's like to live with a chronic illness. Because our personalities and senses of humor are so similar, our perspectives are that much more in sync.

Earlier this week, I called her to see if she'd be interesting in spending the night IN on Halloween. As the night is her favorite holiday, I knew she might be reluctant to commit. As she'd been pretty sick off and on for the weeks prior, I knew she'd probably end up being able to hang out with little old me. As it turns out, we did get to spend time together. We had dinner, chit-chatted, and watched The Shining for the first time in over a decade (for each of us). Let me just tell you: this movie is AWESOME. I somehow remembered it as being sort of slow and boring until the final scenes--but my 28-year-old self now scolds my high school self for not having realized how wonderfully suspenseful the film is. The experience I had watching it was lessened by the pain and discomfort I felt during the loud scenes or very bright shots. I thought to myself a few times, "Wow--this would REALLY be painful in a movie theatre!" I asked HT to turn the volume down once or twice, but the high-pitched, sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat squeaky strings still got to me. When I watch TV with my boyfriend, I almost always have to ask him to turn it down for me. (He's a musician who must already have irreversible hearing damage; I'm an ultra-sensitive girlfriend who is getting paid back by karma for all the times her older sister used to tell her to turn down the volume.) I can relax pretty well on my own, but now even laid-back activities are threats of pain and discomfort. I don't like that, even when I'm in a friend's quiet, smoke-free house--a place that should be lovely for a migraineur--I have to ask her to make many adjustments to accommodate me.

I suppose I feel as if I'm always on guard; that a trigger could be waiting around the corner. IS waiting around the corner, and I've got to be quick enough to catch it.

Even now I'm affected by the unintentional elements of my visit. When HT gave me a long hug goodnight, I could smell hand sanitizer on her, hand sanitizer with a strong scent (strong for me, at least). Even the hug couldn't be an enjoyable goodbye--instead I was thinking, "Oh, I hope she doesn't hold on too long, because that smell is going to wear off onto my clothes and it'll bug me!" Now I'm sitting at this computer, 30 minutes after saying goodnight, and the hand sanitizer smell is wafting through the air and sending daggers through my nose into my brain. Sorry.

So yeah. Back to Halloween. We drove downtown once to deliver HT's husband's i.d. to him--he'd forgotten to carry it along with him in his costume. We got to see a few costumes and were creepily incognito: we wore bags on our heads as we parked outside my favorite bar and waited for HT's husband to come out. Only he and two other friends knew who we were; they snapped a few photos of us. I looked beyond them and saw many of my friends outside the bar, no one knowing I was near. And then we pulled off.

And you know what? I'm not sorry I didn't got out. At this pinot, the night is over for most folks in town and I'm sure they had a great time. So did I. I continue to get used to this lower-key Janet who chooses to stay in when she used to be social, social, social. I hope I stop questioning her choices so much and trust her to do the right thing.