3 WEEKS!!!

I had to share this with you all: in a few hours' time, I'll have hit my three-week NO MIGRAINES mark! My last migraine was very, very early 1/15. I can't believe this--I can't believe it!!

Though I'm trying to remain in the moment, to realize that this is how I'm feeling now and no guarantee for how I'll feel at any point in the future, I can't help but be happy. In the last few weeks, I've been able to let go of a lot of migraine-related anxiety. When I encountered cigarette smoke indoors at a rock show in Atlanta, I didn't go into panic mode, didn't think, "Oh, no! I must cover my face immediately or else I'll be sick!" I did get away from the cigarette smoker and his billowy stench, but I didn't feel panicky about it in the least. I've been so much more calm, cool, and collected. Trying not to take this for granted, and trying my damnedest not to preach to you all about how I really and truly believe the changes I've made to my life could help you in some way. It's really hard not to preach, though. Really hard.

Love,
Janet

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?

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.

mine nose is mine enemy!

In the last several months, my sensitivity to light, smell, and sound has skyrocketed. I don't know what the deal is, but times are tough. I won't even go into the fact that going to rock shows (which is one of my favorite things to do in this entire world) has become painful to me even when I wear my omnipresent earplugs. Let's save that tragedy for another post.

Let us focus on my borderline live-in boyfriend for a second. J. is thoughtful, lovely, kind, smart, and extremely goofy. Wonderful traits. J. wears a combination cologne-deodorant that my 19-year-old self would have swooned over. (Swooned!). He smells so wonderful when he sprays the mist into his pits. Unfortunately, the smell has gotten worse. A couple of years ago, I asked him if he would wear the blue-bottle scent instead of the green-bottle scent because greenie and I didn't get along. Then came a lovely period when he used normal stick deodorant like most of us. A month or so ago, he bought his old brand again...and this time I CANNOT TAKE IT.

Despite my feeling like a crotchety old lady, I asked him that if he was going to get ready for the day at my house could he please spray the deodorant outside on the porch? Affirmative. Except for the times when he forgot and I had to turn on fans and lie down. (One time in particular I got a migraine attack within thirty minutes despite my going as far away from the Spray Site as possible!)

It's been awhile since I trained him to spray outdoors (ew--I sound like I'm talking about a feral cat). Tonight he sprayed his deodorant on the deck and reentered the house. Kind soul.

Too bad the smell is shooting straight up my nostrils into my brain! So gross! I am in my office, door closed and window open. I still cannot shake the smell that he sprayed nearly two hours ago OUTSIDE.

When I was a younger lass, my mom's inability to be around strong sensory stimuli drove me crazy now and then. I'd come in the room after a shower and try to sit with her on the couch, but my shampoo smell was too potent for her and she'd ask me to get up (or even leave the room). When Bath & Body Works lotions were all the rage in eighth grade, I became a fan of the ever-popular "sun-ripened raspberry" line. My mother couldn't stand to be in the same room as I after I slathered myself in the overpriced body lotion. (Again, I will not discuss her other types of overexcitabilities here, but suffice it to say she is very sensitive to her environment.)

It made me sad and hurt my feelings when my mom wouldn't be able to hug me because I smelled. To be honest with you, my friends, I thought she was being overdramatic. (Sorry, ma--I was a 'tudey teenager anyway, eh?) Surely no one could have physical reactions to smells that were so mundane yet lovely! Right?

Wrong.

I am turning into my mother. Yeah, yeah, most adult women come to that realization some time or another. Truth be told, I am proud to be very much like her. Too bad part of that similarity is extended to my nostrils' oversensitive nature. I can't be around strong smells. My boyfriend is going to change deodorants. I hold a shirt over my face if I'm around cigarettes, thereby marking myself as one who is trying her best to passive-aggressively judge the smokers around her. (While I detest cigarette smoking, I am only covering my nose to help stave off the migraine attack, not to pass judgment with a gesture.)

So Ma, I'm sorry. Sorry I doubted the power of your nostrils all those years. Sorry, sorry. For now I am you! Aaaahhh!

The end.

stinky stinky transportation

I had the best intentions of writing about all the migrainous adventures I had in Panama & Costa Rica, but that has yet to happen. This morning I was reminded of one element of my trip I should definitely describe: the stinky transportation.

You're probably imagining fumes, exhaust, and dust in an overcrowded capital where there are no auto emissions laws, and you're right. But dangers accompanied the swankier rides I took in private vans (for work) and in a big ol' pickup truck that was all decked out (one part of the long journey between Panama & C.R.). The relatively comfortable passenger van that picked us up at the hotel each morning and dropped us off each evening was operated by a really friendly, smiling guy named Achurro (sp?). All the seat belts worked! There was enough room for everyone!

The problem? The car potpourri/deodorizer. I couldn't see one of those obnoxiously overbearing scented cardboard trees hanging from the rearview mirror; in fact, the smell seemed to be pumping out through the air conditioner. Ugh. On a few rides, the smell didn't bug me so much; on others, I held my hoodie up against my nose, as I am wont to do in a smoky bar before I make my escape.

I survived the flowery van stink, but since I was immersed in a sea brimming with Migraine triggers that week, it probably did me more harm than good to be in that van 1.5 hours/day on average.

Cue Stink Ride #2: Jim and I got a taxi in Changuinola, Panama to drive us to the Panama-Costa Rica border. This time, I could see the culprit: two of those stinky cardboard trees dangling menacingly from the rearview mirror. "Unwind your window," Jim gestured to me. I did so despite the unpaved roads and the air conditioning the driver had generously turned on. The driver looked back after a couple of minutes and pleasantly asked in Spanish if I would roll up the window. I felt downtrodden and on the edge of tears (as I tend to feel when I'm getting a Migraine and feel there's no end in sight for the next while), but I sucked it up and explained why I had the window open. The driver's eyes lit up, and he explained to me that he, too, was sensitive to the smells--this, in fact, was the only one of the scented trees that didn't give him a headache. He totally understood and we rolled windows down further to look out at the endless banana plantations. For that moment, I was safe again.

People sometimes shut you down, I know, but--for the most part--it's rather touching how understanding others are if you just speak your mind.