Holy Migraine, Batman!

5:11 PM

Yeah. That was me, yesterday. Needless to say, not much got done. I'm hoping to finish the left front of the baby kimono tonight which is a little "behind schedule," but not too bad.

Migraines are a new wonder for me. Like most overly-dramatic young women, I frequently claimed I must be suffering one, to which my mother (who actually got them) would say something like, "You're still vertical. Not a migraine." Ah, the sympathy. Anyway. My first real, honest-to-God migraine struck a few months ago, about an hour after I turned in my back-of-the-book index assignment for a graduate-level course in Indexing and Abstracting. It was an intense assignment. Within an hour of relinquishing it, I began to feel sick. Really sick. Horrible-blinding-pain-in-my-head-accompanied-by-flashing-lights-and-nausea sick. Naturally, class was in Worcester, MA--a good 90 minutes/2 hours from home. By the time class let out I realized I really wasn't in much of a condition for a drive on 495. Unfortunately, when I get sick my "homing" mechanism kicks in at an insane level, rendering me incapable of making any sort of sane judgment.

After a call to The Beloved, several minutes curled in fetal position on a couch in the student lounge, and the purchase of a Coke from the soda machine (I vaguely remembered reading once that caffeine was sometimes helpful in alleviating headaches), I got into the car. And immediately put my head on the steering wheel and began to whimper. Even the weak, pathetic November afternoon light was too much.

It took a long time to get home. I drove and pulled over frequently to whimper and/or throw up. It was not one of my finer moments. When I finally got home, The Beloved asked if I was OK--hopefully he drew his answer from my immediate and unceremonious collapse into bed. Fully clothed. I don't even remember if I managed to kick my shoes off.

When I talked to my mother the next day, she said, "Now that--that was a migraine."

Anyway. The one I had yesterday was not nearly as bad as the one described above, but it certainly was no walk in the park. I could feel it coming on at work and, fortunately, it stayed more or less at bay until I could get home and crawl into bed. I was even well enough to get out of bed later in the evening, though I wasn't very productive.

I've been trying to figure out what triggers them. My mother has figured out she has certain dietary triggers, but mine appear to be entirely caused by stress. Since I can't see any way of effectively eliminating stress from my life, I'm thinking it's time to work on learning to relax a bit more. I thought that knitting was helping, but maybe I need something more. Do any of you have stress-related health problems? What do you do to treat/prevent them?

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