From about 1997 to 1996 (or age 7 to 16 -- I love that I was born in the second week of the '80s, because the years totally match up with my ages!) I suffered from migraines. If you've never had a migraine, it's more than just a bad headache. It's pure misery. For me, it started with blinking lights and blind spots on one side of my field of vision, progressed into the feeling that I had been stabbed in the head with a knife, and ended three hours later with vomiting, dry heaving and exhaustion. I got them about once a month, and they were even more frequent the two years I was in junior high. Then, the year I turned 16, they just went away.
Until last night.
Now, I'm not entirely sure that last night's headache was an actual migraine. My Saturday went like this: bike for 90 minutes in the heat, eat salty food for dinner, drink two huge glasses of red wine, go to bed at 2, wake up at 7:30. And the whole day, I drank maybe 4 ounces of water. Then, on Sunday, I spent the afternoon at Brad's aunt's house, leisurely drank a few more glasses of red wine (they're Italian, so it's like water to them), ate more salty food, and had chocolate for dessert. It was basically a weekend of doing everything the headache doctor tells you NOT to do.
I collapsed into bed at 10:30 and woke up two hours later with the worst headache I've had in a decade. It was on the left side of my head, like my migraines used to be, and although I had no visual aura, I was immediately nauseous. I also had major sensitivity to light and sound (the freaking light on my cell phone screen and my cat's gentle snoring made me want to vomit). I got out of bed so I wouldn't disturb the husband and the fuzzy man and went downstairs.
The next three hours were spent walking back and forth between the freezer and fridge (ice for my forehead, water for the hydration and coke for the caffeine) and the medicine cabinet (Advil). Every time I changed position on the couch, my head would throb -- badly. I wanted to cry, but crying makes headaches worse, so instead I just cursed. Eventually, after laying in silence for hours, the headache went away and I was able to get about an hour of sleep. Today I still have a weird headache hangover (I'm exhausted, dizzy, starving, and my head throbs a little bit every time I get up too fast), but in general I feel pretty OK. I felt horrible at work this morning, but as the day went on, I felt better.
Coincdentally, I had my annual (ahem...okay, first one since January 2007) doctor's appointment this afternoon and mentioned the headache to my doctor. She said that if I started getting migraines again she'd write me a prescription for a triptan, a class of drugs that did not exist back when I had my migraines. But in the meantime, "just" cut out the wine (BOO), cut back on my daily caffeine intake (DOUBLE BOO), eat foods with less salt and fewer preservatives (not even gonna boo this one, it's so lame), get more sleep, and drink more water. I'm trying not to freak out too much - it's likely just a one-time result of bad choices on my part.
I have a lot of work to catch up on from my missed afternoon, but I'm going to try to get to bed early and log on early in the morning instead. Here's to 8 hours...
2 comments:
Alison--when I get migraines, something I've found helpful to do is to touch the pressure points around my eye (usually my right eye) when I'm laying down in the dark and the medicine is trying to do it's job. Usually it's the sinus area. It really makes a big difference with coping with the pain until the medicine and rest takes over.
I thought I was the only one that had migraines that magically went away. Bad news, I've had 3 in the past year. I cut out all the bad stuff, mine seem to be directly stress related at this point (although I read somewhere low blood sugar or dehydration can bring them on). I hope for your sake the don't come back, but do know that the meds are better.
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