Good ol' olfactory

A candle that smells good to most people. A blossoming tree that everyone else wants to sniff. Perfume that your friend wears one teensy spray of. Very diluted bleach you use to clean your house. A whiff of cigarette smoke as you hug a friend goodbye.

All of these things can trigger a migraine, and one of them is making me feel sick on an otherwise healthy day.

Migraine without headache

It's rare, but it happens. I think that I suffered from it during the nighttime and early morning hours as I tried to sleep. Imagine all the side effects of a migraine (nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, aura, discomfort, sensitivity to light & sound) without the headache. Better than the usual thing, but, at least for me, scarier to treat with expensive drugs since I'm usually not positive that what I'm experiencing is a Migraine.

In any case, I'm not feeling so hot, but I definitely feel better compared to where I was this morning. Ugh.

The infamous REBOUND HEADACHE

Are you familiar with this phenomenon? In my life, it has taken on a life of its own. What follows is an all-too-real example of it.

On Friday night, I wasn't feeling up to par--but what else is new? And is it fair to say I wasn't feeling up to par when my par is usually not too high? I wasn't feeling up to a healthy person's par, I should say. I thought I would be okay to go out with friends. Unfortunately, the headache got worse rather rapidly and I could feel my brain throbbing as I walked with a friend to my car and was trying to figure out which party to attend next. (No, my social calendar is usually not packed--but I did have two get-togethers I'd promised to drop by.) We decided to drop by my house before the parties, and as soon as I sat down in my faithful recliner, I realized that the Migraine wasn't going anywhere. In fact, it was making itself more known by the second. After being home for 20 minutes, I asked my friend if she minded if we skipped the parties. I dropped her off at home and then went to bed, avoiding the Relpax because I wanted to see if I could sleep it off.

Sleeping off a Migraine is something that used to work for me, but it hasn't done too well by me for the last several years. Perhaps it was just the quiet passage of time that temporarily cured the pain. In any case, now I am caught in the all-too-common dichotomous nature of Migraine treatments.

1. We are told to take our Relpax (or Imitrex, or whatever drug you need to kick a Migraine out) at the first sign of Migraine. I can't do this because I have CDH and have the first sign of a Migraine almost every hour of the day. I usually must wait 'til it gets progressively worse.
The more you let your body get into the pattern of getting Migraines, the more easily the pain comes back the next time, having mastered the neural passageways and routes necessary to dilate and constrict the arteries and veins.
2. If one takes a reactive Migraine drug like Relpax or Imitrex, he or she can expect to get another Migraine in 12-48 hours. This is what's dubbed "the rebound headache." Our poor patient will either suffer through this second Migraine or take another Relpax to fight it off. If a third rebound headache occurs, she's not to take another Relpax. One cannot become dependent upon this drug, so one ends up in agony much of the time if she's already suffered through two Migraine episodes in a row.

Back to this weekend. I awoke on Saturday morning with the headache being even worse than it was the night before. After stumbling about the house for an hour or so, I sucked it up and took a Relpax along with 500mg of Naproxen (my doctor's prescription, not my own addition). Within 1 1/2 hours, I felt great. I've never felt so wonderful as I do when the drugs have kicked in & there's no trace of a headache for a few hours. Sigh. All-powerful me! I went out with friends, visited a neighbor, went to a play, and stayed out until 3 or 4 AM.

Sunday morning? Yep. Migraine. Not a hangover headache as I had initially thought (& half-hoped). I took Relpax (plus the Naproxen, of course) and eventually felt good.

But I can't ever feel entirely good, knowing I'm utterly dependent on ridiculously, unfairly expensive medication. My pain this weekend cost a lot in terms of psychological and physical strain, but it also cost me lots in U.S. dollars: about $55 for prescriptions my plan no longer covers.

When I think about it in those terms, a ghost of pain shoots through my head. As usual, it's time to avoid this topic and pretend I'm "normal" in the hopes of having an okay day.

to sleep or not to sleep?

In one of my first entries, I mentioned that caffeine can be a migraine trigger but that it can also help prevent Migraine. Last night I said that stress can be a trigger, but that the sudden lifting of stress can also cause a headache to begin.

Added to this precarious list is SLEEP. Too little sleep = Migraine. Too much? Yep, you've got it: Migraine. Last night I deliberately ignored the alarm-setting period and fell into a peaceful, dream-filled sleep. I wanted to catch up on the sleep I missed throughout my week, and I sure did do that: 12-13 hours after putting myself to rest, I woke up feeling...unrefreshed and groggy. I did it again: too much sleep made me feel ill.

What is the perfect balance? There's no special perfect balance for any of the potential triggers I've mentioned. Sometimes four hours of sleep is just enough to make you feel great; other times, it's way too little and I'll wake up with a throbbing head.

Some days, this Migraine puzzle seems so complicated and intricate I just want to give up. I suppose I need to focus on just one aspect at a time, which will take months (years!) but will perhaps yield some results.

Tonight's experiments? Laying off the alcohol (which rarely acts as a trigger) just to see...

PHOTOPHOBIA

The title of this entry may be unfamiliar to you, but you can probably guess the definition of "photophobia." Basic vocabulary rules are forming in your head, and you've come up with a few options. Scared of...scared of...photographs? Photographers? Photons? Light?

YOU'RE SCARED OF LIGHT?

No. Not quite that. But I am abnormally sensitive to it, and this sensitivity has only worsened over the years. Since I was a wee little thing, my classrooms have been lit with overhead fluorescent lighting, which is proven to be bad lighting for anyone (in terms of energy level and productivity). For us photophobic Migraneurs, the indiscernible flickering of fluorescent lights can trigger an episode. Unfortunately, our eyes and brains do discern the rapidly vibrating blue light when the vast majority of people are fine with it. Thus far, there are no solutions for photophobia, as people think you should treat the cause (in this case, Migraine, which I'm doing my damnedest to treat) and avoid the triggers if possible. For me, this is not possible. It's come down to my having to ask professors if we can dim all the lights but one row. After I flick the light switches on and off and the beginning of each class session (to my unwittingly ignorant classmates), I sit in the darkest area of the room and don my hat and sunglasses.

Unfortunately, I have to look up from underneath the brim of my worn baseball cap in order to see others while they speak; I have to adjust my reddish-brown-hued (to counteract the blue of the lights) glasses in strange formations so that reflected light from our white working tables doesn't flash into my eyes. In looking up from under my hat bill, the ever-sore left side of my neck starts to get tired and sore. Soreness of the neck? Yep, another one of my major Migraine triggers. The entire time I'm trying to manipulate my eye shields, I feel like a total drama queen. Logically, I know that people don't mind my needing to mold the environment a bit in order to adopt to it as healthily as possible. At the same time, I feel as if they're all thinking, "Oh, god. Here she goes...the Migraine girl, being overdramatic as usual."

Regardless of my classmates' opinions, which I'm sure are less intense than I posit here, I am sick of having to adjust myself so that I can sit in class while worrying the whole time that the Migraine is going to rear its ugly head no matter what. Usually it does flare up. As I write, the laptop screen is leaned way back so that the whitish blue light doesn't glare into my worn out eyeballs. My neck and left shoulder are tight and sore, and once in awhile the throbbing, dull pain worms its way up from my shoulder to my temple and cheek, where I feel a strange fizziness in my jaw. Then it's back down again to the shoulder until I manage to forget it for a few minutes.

Because I have Chronic Daily Headache in conjunction with Migraine disease, I'm not supposed to take my Relpax until the headache has started progressing. So I'm left with a half-headache almost every day, one that has recently become full-fledged on weekend nights, presumably because my week's stress has been lifted. (Yes, stress can be a factor as well as the lifting of it.)

I've turned from storytelling to complaining, which might be another sign the pain is worsening and I need to get off the computer.

Penny for your thoughts, nonexistent readers!

Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities (OEs)

Heard of 'em? This site will give you a brief overview. In short, people possessing one or more of the "overexcitabilities" react to their environments more intensely (and for a longer period) than the average person. For example, someone with high sensual overexcitability reacts dramatically to sensory stimuli: sound, light, touch, etc. are heightened experiences as contrasted with regular people's reactions. (All the poorly-translated language includes non-words like "overexcitability" and faux amis like "sensual." A more apt term would be "heightened sensory sensitivity," but Dabrowski's initial translators have already made their odd mark.)

I'm quite intrigued with the connection between the OEs and Migraine disease. Though I've not read any literature directly linking the OEs to Migraine patterns, an implicit connection most definitely exists: this claim is made manifest with even the most preliminary Google search for "Migraine." As someone whose scores are sky-high on all facets of the OE scale and whose Migraine headaches are out of control, I have a vested interest in teasing out the possibility of a correlated (if not causal) relationship between heightened sensitivity and Migraine.

Let me know what you think out there--do you have Migraine disease or another chronic pain disorder? Do you have illness(es) related to heightened sensory input?

If famous people get 'em, they must be real!

http://www.head-health.com/general/famous-migraine-sufferers-29.html

I just wrote several pages' worth of an introductory entry to this web log, and it disappeared on me even though it was automatically saving every few minutes. It's enough to drive a girl crazy.

To my shock, the word "migraine" isn't even included on the Blogger spellcheck list. This is problematic, wouldn't you say?

When I feel up to recreating what I've begun here, I'll post another entry. For now, the glaring screen is mocking me and I am entirely too annoyed that my first effort was whisked away into internet land.

biting the bullet

I've suffered from migraine disease for the past 12 years or so. I always knew there was something odd about my need to sleep for two hours every day after school; no one else got irritable and half-blind with pain when she drank a Diet Coke or skipped a meal. Halfway into my battle, I read a description of what a migraine entailed and though to myself, "This is it! This is me! At last my condition has a name. I'm not crazy!"

My mother made an appointment with an Atlanta area general physician the summer of 1999 when I was living at home and working at one of the 4,000 local Starbucks between freshman and sophomore years of college. The doctor asked me questions about my head pain and nausea patterns, and I was reassured by even the simplest nod, sure that she would have The Answer. I explained that I feared I was addicted to caffeine, that the days I worked I felt okay and the days I didn't my head pain made a comeback. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about a caffeine addiction. Caffeine often helps people get rid of headaches, so you're fine."

Oh.

I explained to her that I took Excedrin Migraine after my headaches were swimming in that crucial point between dizzy achiness and must-stay-in-a-pitch-black-room-with-no-sound-or-movement stage. "Does the Excedrin work?" "Well, yes, most of the time." I can't remember now if I said what I felt, that I was sick of popping over-the-counter pills almost every day and living in constant fear that whatever my plans were, they'd get ruined by my debilitating agony. Living was only possible if I fully depended on the Excedrin; unfortunately, its effects were unpredictable and were rapidly becoming less and less helpful. Did I tell the doctor that? I'm not sure.

At this point, six and a half years after this ill-fated doctor's visit, I find myself angry that she didn't diagnose me with migraine disease right then. I now know that the sooner you can start treating migraines, the less severe they tend to become as you get older.

My original entry continued for several more paragraphs, paragraphs I don't have the energy to reinvent right now. Keep waiting with your baited breath, audience, and more will follow when I'm in the mood.