April Migraine Blog Carnival posted!

Check it out here.

I submitted an old post but it's not on the blog carnival page for some reason. Here's what I wrote about bibliotherapy/guided reading.

March 2010 Headache Carnival posted!

Diana Lee's at it again, and at last I've gotten it together in time to contribute a post. Check out the March 2010 Headache Blog Carnival, Opening Up to Family & Friends: March 2010 Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival.

question for my fellow migraine bloggers

Do y'all still use Wellsphere at all? I get about 50 emails a week from them (slight exaggeration?) but never click into the site. Now I only vaguely remember why I decided to stop being involved, and I'm too lazy to do research to pick at my old-self's brain.

So I'll just ask you: do you use Wellsphere? Is there any point to my keeping the account open (assuming I get more active in the health blogging world again).

Thank you. exes and ohs to you.

April Headache & Migraine Blog Carnival posted!

A helpful potpourri of writers' favorite posts from the past month. Enjoy!

Pain Blog Carnival

Check it out here!

http://www.howtocopewithpain.org/blog/705/pain-carnival-march-2009/

In other news, I'm back from my month-long sojourn in South America. I have had many blog ideas drift through my head, but I've not been in the mood to write. We'll see what the next couple of weeks hold...

Hope everyone is well.

Creating a Migraine-Friendly Environment

Diana Lee has the March headache blog carnival posted. Once again, I slacked and missed the boat--this time I didn't even clue in enough to know what the topic was. Too bad, too, because I have a lot to say about migraine-friendly spots. (I have oft thought of writing reviews of restaurants, offices, etc. based mainly on the places' migraine-friendliness!)

Read the blog carnival entries here!

attention fellow bloggers

I've been remiss in adding some of you to my blog roll. Whether or not we've ever met online, please shoot me a message if you'd like for me to add your name to my links list. There are lots of you out there who read my blog and also maintain your own--I'd love to include your blogs on my page, too!

Thanks.

Grand Rounds posted!

Check this out--what amazing blog posts from all over the web. Ladybloggers are awesome. Please excuse me for using the nonexistent word "ladybloggers."

the best is yet to come!

I've been doing better and better at staying positive--it helps that my migraine frequency and severity have both plummeted in the last month and a half, I know.

Goals for 2009:

• Eat well (and according to doctor's instructions) -- this means limiting dairy (wah) and cutting out as much refined & white flour as possible. This means eating more fresh fruit and veggies. No regular intake of sugary sweetness.
  
• Exercise frequently. No need to pressure myself to become a runner or hard-core cardioaddict. Just regular, gentle exercise. Slow laps in the pool, long walks around the neighborhood, yoga class. Take it easy while staying in shape and keeping those delicious endorphins and serotonin levels coursing through my body.
• Accept my life as it is and figure out which goals of mine are realistic. Don't take on too much. Meditate. Learn to calm myself down and lower stress. Don't overcommit. Do make time for friends and family when possible and healthy. Don't give myself guilt trips for not accomplishing every single thing I have ever considered.
  
• Sleep as regularly as possible. Try to cut out naps (wah). Wake up around the same time each day.
• Don't get intimidated by the above goals! Any little bit I can do will help; the more I do, the better off I am.
  

I wish you all good health and happiness in 2009. I haven't been blogging as much because I haven't wanted to think too much about migraine while feeling well. No, I don't think I'll jinx myself or anything; it's just that, for the moment, I don't need this outlet as much. Oh, okay--and I think I'll jinx my current good fortune just a bit.

That being said, goodbye for now! Talk to you next year.

blog theft!

Dude, what the hell? (Sorry if I revert to Bill & Ted talk, but I'm quite miffed!)

I got a Google blogs alert for a blog entry called "the migraine girl: what's so pernicious about feeling good?" The document is mine, but has been rewritten to include random spaces, deliberate misspellings, and the like. I of course posted an entry called "what's so bad about feeling good" on November 30. I did NOT post it on some b.s. site called "Best Farma Online." I've been stolen from! Right?

I recall talk from other migraine bloggers awhile back about a guy stealing their content and posting it on his supposedly authorless site. (No author listed, harder to know who's behind it.) I can't remember what action they took or how they got him to remove the plagiarized material.

Help, bloggers!

For the moment, I'll be posting a comment on this person's web page immediately. I'm so annoyed and angry!

December headache blog carnival posted!

And no, I didn't get around to posting this month. Yet again I forgot! :(

Happier Holidays: December 2008 Headache Blog Carnival

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.

When meds make you lose your mind

To everyone who's ever felt out of it or stupid while taking a brain-altering drug: this short but poignant New York Times article by Judith Warner is wonderful! I responded to the article with this long letter (which initially started as a short comment). Links throughout lead you to relevant blog entries.

Dear Judith,

I confided in a friend a few weeks back about how stupid and out of it I felt while on my preventive drug (Zonegran) for around 1.5 years. He forwarded me this article this morning--I'm so glad it was published in such a large forum!

I joked a lot about the potential side effects ("difficulty word-finding," "cognitive impairment") when I first started popping Zonegran, but I never thought I'd actually be one of the patients affected. My cognitive impairment didn't kick in until a few months into drug treatment--and the patient leaflet said that all the cognitive side effects are usually here and gone after the first six weeks of treatment. I decided I was just getting stupid. For the first time, I wasn't in school or doing academic reading. I couldn't work a 9-5 job because of my migraine attacks. Maybe I just lost my brain.

Madge (commenter above), it seems you're admonishing Judith for not having said something sooner to her doctor or pharmacist. It seems to me that Judith took action pretty quickly. As for me, I was embarrassed about the side effects and not even sure if they were side effects from Zonegran--maybe they were just side effects of life, the new and not-so-improved Janet. I'd always prided myself on my writing and thinking ability and suddenly that was disappearing. This phenomenon is so strange, so unfamiliar, and so hard to pinpoint that it's not easy to see that it's connected to a drug you started months ago. I didn't say anything to my doctor or pharmacist about it until months later.

Someone named "cla" commented before me about how busy doctors are today, how perhaps we patients should adjust our expectations instead of expecting doctors to be at our beck and call (I'm paraphrasing here--hope I've not taken any liberties, cla). This is b.s.! I KNOW that doctors are overwhelmed with insurance claims, paperwork, bureaucracy, and five visits a day from drug company peddlers who overwhelm them with ads and sample medications. I think that cognitive side effects should be treated as seriously as physical side effects, that doctors should be honest and up front with patients. Migraine disease is so much more than a series of episodes (which may or may not involve a headache)--it's a disorder that affects your ability to function, your ability to have a so-called "normal" life, your ability to enjoy what you have without being worried about the next attack. If doctors are focused entirely on how the body is affected (if they're focused on that at all and not distracted by their bureaucratic duties) and not focused on how the patient and her life are altered due to the disease (or drugs given to treat the disease), those doctors need some lessons in patient-doctor communication. They need to learn more about migraine's ins and outs and realize that, just because the clinical trials didn't reveal a prevalence of a certain side effect, LOTS of people are losing their minds, their selves, while on certain prescription meds.

After over a year and a half on Zonegran, I finally weaned myself off (with doctor's straightforward assistance and little care as to why). I still don't feel as smart as I used to. I still have trouble finding the words that used to come so easily to me--but I have to have the faith that this will come back to me. That I've taken brain-altering drugs and it might just take awhile for the firing synapses to resume their old speed.

In closing, thanks for this article. Thank you so much.

NEW BEGINNINGS blog carnival up

The September edition of the How to Cope with Pain blog carnival is up. This month's theme? "New Beginnings." Check it out here!

guided reading/bibliotherapy

Has anyone heard of guided reading and/or bibliotherapy?  One of my graduate school professors is a big proponent and expert of this, and once I learned more about it, I realized I'd been doing it my whole life.  A teacher or mentor helps select reading material that a student may have a meaningful connection to; during and after the student's reading, teacher leads student to talk about how he/she felt while reading, what issues it brought up, and how it can help the student cope with his/her issues.  Well, that's it in a nutshell.

One thing I've noticed recently is the abundance of characters with Migraine in the books I read!  I don't mean to select works in which a main character has Migraine; I think it's more likely that Migraine is so very common that it's bound to come up frequently in both fiction and nonfiction.

Ian McEwan's Atonement comes to mind.  The mother in the story suffers from very frequent, debilitating Migraine attacks.  Think of Virginia Woolf and her struggle with headache as described in her own works, her journals, and in The Hours.  I could come up with MANY, many others if I looked at my bookshelf and gave it some thought.  

Reading about people who deal with Migraine--whether these people are real or not--helps me immensely.  Perhaps above all else is the fact that the author's choice to include a migraineur (or more) shows that he/she is immensely understanding of the disorder.  (Especially if the description of the migraineur rings true to a reader who knows the ins and outs of Migraine!)  In Atonement, Emily's children know when she's ill just by the way the house is lit, how it feels to walk in the front door.  That really resonated with me:  I remember running in the front door after school when I was young, realizing too late that I should've been quiet, that I should've heeded the signs.  You see, my mom frequently had Migraine attacks (or what I would call Migraine--I am not sure if she was ever diagnosed, but her headaches fit the menstrual migraine description to a T) and I'd know it was that time again by the cool, dark feeling of the house, the curtains in the den drawn as she slept on the couch.  Those days were always so sad.

In any case, I encourage you all to share with me (and therefore each other) any books you've read wherein a character deals with Migraine or another chronic pain disease.  If you've never read any books with such a character, I encourage you to do so:  you'll find a bosom friend who understands you.

what I write about

MigraineChick had an interesting post that included her very own Wordle, a visual representation of what words she uses. The most frequently used words are in bigger font.

I plugged in my url for this blog and Wordle instantly generated a page showing what words I use the most. The end result is visually pretty but, in many senses, really sad.

Both "Migraine" and "migraine" make an appearance, as do the words "stressing" and "argument." No need for lots of explanation here--just wanted to say it made me sad to look at it.

How to Cope with Pain blog carnival posted

The July blog carnival at How to Cope with Pain is now up. I'm off to peruse it now. (As usual, I slacked and didn't provide an entry. Next time, Gadget. Next time.)

I really pushed some buttons when I complained about Dr. Diamond's belief that there is a "migraine personality." Admittedly, I was glad that I got a handful of comments from critical thinkers, most of whom didn't think my anger was merited.

Here's the deal. I don't argue that the majority of patients going to Dr. Diamond's clinic fit within the bounds of what he claims to be a "migraine personality." Here's what I take issue with: Migraine affects millions of people of all ages, all backgrounds, all socioeconomic categories, all heights, and all races. Publishing a comment claiming there's a "migraine personality" in such a gigantic publication as USA Today is irresponsible.

Let's review Diamond's description of the migraine personality: "usually young, petite, compulsive, neat individuals who keep long lists."

As all of us out here in the blogosphere know, there's been an exponential increase in migraine awareness articles, blogs, and advertisements in the last few years. I believe that, with a good chunk of exception, many people who scour the internet for medical information tend to be young (a subjective description to start with) and rather assertive in terms of self-care. Anyone remember how the old notion of "migraine personality" described a compulsive white woman who was middle- or upper-middle-class? That belief was dismissed long ago after the grand realization that, generally speaking, that description matches the type of person who would choose to go to the doctor. I can name at least ten people right off the bat who choose not to go to the doctor for their Migraines because of lack of money--of course it's people who choose to spend their money on medical visits that are the ones who go to the doctor!

I have such a great argument in my head but am having a lot of trouble verbalizing it all. Suffice it to say the following:

1. I greatly respect Dr. Diamond and the work he has done.
2. I find it was irresponsible of him to publicize a personal belief (without statistical evidence provided) in such a huge forum.
3. I'm disappointed that we Migraineurs had the opportunity to make the general public more aware about this condition and ended up instead with a cursory article that did very little to explore the implications and effects of Migraine disease.

To see other takes on the issue, please read the comments on my original post. Everyone brought up good points, but I'm stickin' to my guns on this one.

July Migraine & Headache Blog Carnival Posted

Diana Lee has done it again! Visit this page to see the July edition of the Migraine & Headache Disease blog carnival. This month's focus? "Migraines & Spirituality."

Have fun reading!

good article on childhood headache & Migraine

I enjoyed reading this and found that many tips offered up can be applied to adults' lives as well!

http://denanhealthcare.blogspot.com/2008/06/frequent-headaches-and-migraine-in.html