My Life. My Migraine.

It took three days to get home. Three long, exhausting, unbearable days. And let me tell you, I thought I was angry as everyone around me loaded my stuff into the trailer. That didn't even begin to touch on my short temper when I really needed to stop and eat. And no, I'm not talking about being "hangry". I'm talking about irritability.  And wow. You'd think I was 13 going through my moody, mad at the world phase. But the thing is, I'm 20. It isn't a phase. It's a symptom. I fully recognize that there is no excuse for the behavior, and I fully recognize when I've reached my "irritable" stage of my migraine. Sadly, like the pain itself, it can't just be turned off, and knowing that I can't just stop being short with someone once its started, actually makes it worse. Sometimes I don't notice it right off the bat. Like last week, as I dreaded packing my kitchen and the thoughts of trying to even start kept ...

Some days, we just have to take a step back. Today. I finished Sons of Anarchy. But, as I glanced down at my phone, feeling kind of lost and unsettled, I saw that it happened again. Today, a Madden Tournament. Friday, a school shooting that never even made the news. We don't ever really get answers. We don't get closure. Some people get angry all over social media, but that's all. You know what we get? We get videos. We all get to experience it almost as if we were there. But, we sit. We stare. We're in shock. But we're so separated from it. We are desensitized from everything around us. Looking back, I remember being little and carefree. I remember standing in front of our old TV in my living room. Dad had just left for work. We just stood there and the plane hit the second tower. People didn't talk about it. People didn't know what to say. I don't like flying. I remember hearing the news break. Sandy Hook. It was in the news, but...

Let me start by saying, I have never encountered such a shallow group of people in my life... But, let me also point out that it really isn't your fault. I mean, personally, I'm going to blame your shitty personality and your complete inability to communicate with someone in different circumstances than your own, on your extremely shitty taste in music. So here's the thing. It's the title of this blog. "My Life. My Migraine" Here's the thing, my migraine, is my life. I own that. I have fully accepted the who I am going to be, is 100% determined by how I choose to respond to this condition. But here's the thing everyone somehow forgets. My migraine may be my life, but my life isn't just my migraine. This isn't some mutually exclusive relationship. Yet, for the most part, that's how its treated. There seems to be nothing to talk about beyond this sickness. Beyond the pain or the struggles. Or the latest news from the doct...

Alright, y'all crazy stuff is in the works... Including move number 8? in the last 2 years... Yup. 8. 6 months ago, I sat in this same spot. Took a similar photo. And I wrote a piece:  Moving With Migraine . Feel free to glance back at it, as I'm sure all the same emotions and struggles that plagued me then, plague me now. But today isn't really about moving, its about the dumb things my brain has done while attempting to move. Brain Fog. Sometimes its as simple as not being able to remember an easy word. Stopping mid-sentence feeling completely insane because you can't remember whatever it is you were trying to say... only to remember 15 minutes later that the correct word was "pen"... Brain fog is frustrating to no end. It tends to play well with my ability to jumble words as a migraine is setting in. Real fun when you can't remember words and then start jumbling the ones your brain does recognize. It's like dyslexia for my mouth. ...

To put it quite frank, I've had enough. Oh, darling, I am beyond angry. I'm livid. Enough so that I've sent my head swirling back into the horrendous pain I was experiencing Thursday. I dragged myself to school to withdraw. No one was there who needed to be to get my forms properly signed. That was stressful in itself. By the time I was driving home, I was done for the day. My energy was used up. I fully intended to just lay down and sleep the rest of the day. But no. I received the wonderful phone call saying that my tenant had been approved and we could work out exchanging keys and security deposits... So, as previously discussed, my tenant was hoping to get some of her stuff moved in as her lease ends the day I'm officially moving out... she was hoping to start getting stuff over here ASAP. Me being me, pushed myself way too hard. I cleared all the boxes and packed up everything in my office. I dismantled furniture and stubbed my toes a few times. All ...

One day. I've had one okay day this entire week. And by day I mean like 7 hours on Wednesday, followed by two medicine days in a row. I spent Thursday painfully rotating between my couch and my papasan chair. I had to entertain people who were picking up my bed and desk chair. They all had an awful lot to say to me. I shouldn't have to explain myself when I say you're going to need to bring help to get the bed and mattress out of my apartment. You should just bring the help. I shouldn't have to defend myself for not helping. Unless you want to pay for the hospital bills because I overexerted myself... Then came the suggestions. People I don't know. Telling me to explore random weird spinoffs of chiropractic. Telling me to order a $300 test kit to see if I'm allergic to things in my diet. It was hard enough standing for the half hour they were here, but listening to that and having to be in the light and the heat... no thank you. Thursday night I p...

On one of my last days of work, as I cradled my head and struggled to get through the short shift I had that evening, on the way out, my coworker looked at me and said: "You know, for as bad as you feel, you certainly don't show it" It was the first time I stepped back from a comment like that and realized that she wasn't trying to diminish me. She was coming from a common place. She knew exactly the pain I was in, and was truly almost impressed that I could go on with my day and appear to be a high functioning adult. And that is where this post came from. There's so many of us, who day in and day out are fighting. Fighting for the pain to stop. Fighting for those around us to just let us be or try and understand us. Fighting to hide what's going on. We're all simply fighting to be normal, but we never will be, and that's okay. I took the time to reach out to people with conditions ranging from migraines (like mine), to anxiety and depressio...

The whole concept of "insurance" doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. Most people never hit their premiums. Most people don't go to see the doctor more than for their yearly check up. Some people never go to the doctor. And then there's people like me. People who have a different doctors appointment almost every week. People with conditions that aren't well understood, or require extreme measures to treat them. People who require medications and have to take them day and night. People who search across the nation for top specialists. People who depend on their insurance, because without it they wouldn't be able to afford their treatments... But then we reach this point where we've tried everything. Seriously, my list of medications that I've tried for my migraines, is longer than the checklist of options my headache clinic has me go through. I mean really, how many doctors do I have to see for them to realize that throwing ...

There's just something about it. That place where the sand meets the cold salty water. That place where the horizon seems to go on forever. Its that moment when you're driving down the road, windows down, and you cross the first bridge and the scent of salty air begins to consume you. I'm sure there's some sort of scientific evidence that backs up this notion of Vitamin Sea. So, in this whirlwind I've been tossed into between having to leave my job and accept a different life it seems like a lot of bigger questions were also up in the air. I woke up way too early yesterday morning. I knew I had to tell my boss that I had no choice but to just be done. This resulted in a phone call to my parents way too early. As the day progressed... really slowly... I ended up back on the phone with my mom. The idea was presented to go through with these SPG Blocks and get through the semester, and come Christmas, they'd come pack me up and move me home. They...

This disease. It baffles me. I can't sleep at night because I'll be to hot. I wake up sweating and clammy. But here I am, it is over 80 degrees outside... I'm wrapped up in a flannel, long pants, furry slippers, all while being buried under two large blankets. I'm freezing. Before I left work, I noticed how cold I was when someone else mentioned they were feeling warm. I had just put it off to how freezing work normally is. Then the chills set in. I could feel it start at the top of my forehead and just move through my entire body. Then the goosebumps were covering my arms. Maybe my face looked flush at this point too. And so I left. Disappointed in myself. That's how I've felt lately. My primary care doctor thinks that oh I'm just stressed out. My neurologist feels bad for me. He was actually outside my door crying talking to the nurse discussing which meds they could get me that may help ease the pain. Because I was just so nice. And ...

I lay here unable to lift my head up real high. Its just so heavy today. The effects of not going to massage therapy this week are showing. Everything is tense. I keep trying to stretch out my neck, but it hurts. The shots I received... all 4 of them... made the neck tension much worse. I try and sit up straight. I try to adjust my posture, but I just wind up curled back up struggling to support my head. I'd love to get up off the couch and do some yoga. But I'd probably make myself sicker. I get to just lay here. Until its time to eat again. Or until I need to get dressed to go to work. I work all weekend. That scares me. It was the right thing to do to put in my "two weeks" notice, but with as much pain as I'm in, I can't see myself effectively communicating with customers. I can barely sit up right now, and with each hour since I've been up, the pain has only gotten worse. If I finish out my last week of work, I'll have about $300...

Three months ago I prepared myself for a new beginning. A promise of something better. Something more fulfilling. I missed the whole part of my interior design course that actually described different interior design styles, so I took it upon myself to create a mood board that would capture each style in a way I could visually understand it. Today I ripped that board apart. Mostly because I'm trying to sell the very large bulletin board behind the pictures... but the dismantling of the board is pretty symbolic. Honestly anything I own that doesn't have a clear purpose or use, is being sold. I mean, who actually needs bedside tables that hold a single lamp that's crooked that only end up holding other cluttered things that wait for never get used... I've got some big decisions that I still have to make. Quitting my job sucks, but that honestly wasn't a choice that was up to me. Yes I need money, but I can't physically do work. At least not schedule...

Day in and day out, I'm plagued with this disconnect between myself and those around me. So today, I'm writing you this letter. To my future teachers... I promise I'm not trying to skip your class. I know you see my accommodation letter and wish you could just have a class full of students who didn't need anything extra from you. But I'm not sorry you'll have to perhaps put in a little more work. I am sorry that you've already now cast judgment on me. I'm sorry that because of this judgment, I will have to work harder than the other students in the class just to prove that I'm a great student. But here's the thing, I'm a great student. Hell, I talk all the time. 8 AM lecture class? Guess who the only participating voice will be... that's right its me. You'll probably eventually ask me to stop talking so other students are forced to participate. Sorry again, I'm here for my learning experience, not theirs. I hope you...

August 3rd, 2016. After months of drawing and saving up, I permanently affixed a symbol that meant so much to me on my back. A lotus flower: as a lotus flower is born in the water, grows in the water and rises out of the water to stand above it unsoiled, so I born in the world, raised in the world, having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world  Fortitude: courage in pain or adversity.  I struggled through high school and felt extremely accomplished in graduating and taking the next steps forward. To me this summed up what I had gone through and would serve as a reminder that I could get through anything. What I didn't know was the true understanding of fortitude. Sure it felt like it. But I didn't. The problem was, I wasn't really doing the whole "courageous" thing the right way. I understood the definition of "strength in the face of pain of grief" but the first part of "the ability to do something that frightens one" ...

In today's episode of my head hurts and no an Advil won't solve my problems... I wanted to break down what is becoming the "cycle" of my migraines. No, I don't intend to explain the pre and postdrome phases of "migraine" in all sorts of clinical terms, but rather the way the migraine evolves and responds to treatments and how the pain changes. Day 1: So we're going to back track and just venture through my last four days as my stellar example for my life... We're jumping back to Thursday. The scattered thunderstorms have rolled through and the last of them drifted off in the early hours of the morning. It was so refreshing waking up and hearing the quiet rain pouring down, knowing I could drift back to sleep to that. I woke up, got ready for work, and symptoms of pain slowly went away. I still felt a bit foggy, but as the day went on, even while at work exposed to lots of bright sunlight, I wasn't agitated by it. Work was slo...

Progress doesn't always mean noticeable. Progress is something slow, something earned, and something that goes in many directions. I sat down in June and decided I needed to physically document this journey so that I'd know what to say to doctors and specialists more accurately. Sure my existing methods had been able to show frequency of migraines and medication use, but that was really all they were good for. So, after almost two months, I decided the beginning of a new month was a good time to sit back and reflect on what it was that I'd been focusing in on each day. Starting most importantly, with what worked. I want to share this because I think its important for those of you reading who may be looking for ideas yourself... Number 1 on my list was the aromatherapy I started doing each morning. Typically a blend of lemon, rosemary, and spearmint - meant to be uplifting. Something about it must have created a sort of balance in my system that on mornings when I...