Migraine. Bad one. Been a while, but perfect storm this week. Period (a weirdly heavy one) and emotional drama and general life stress all blended up to bring me to my knees.
The graphic below pretty accurately shows what a bad migraine looks like for me. It might last 1-3 days with an extra day of pre or postdrome before or afterwards.
It all started to hit me Friday, work ran long and I had to go get the twins directly afterwards so no time for any self care. I would just have to muscle through and keep meds close at hand. I felt it coming on a little but I ignored it. I picked them up and they were in good spirits. It was nice. I stayed up late to hang out with them playing video games and indulging in ice cream. I always stay up late with the twins – but this time I was forgoing much needed sleep.
I have been waking up and tossing and turning with extreme tension in my neck/traps for about a month now – haven’t had time to do anything about it and it mostly goes away once I start walking around…then returns every night. I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t move my neck because the muscles are so stiff – so I try to shift position. It hurts. A lot. But my need for sleep trumps a stiff neck. This weekend, I suppose because of all the stress, it was worse than ever.. but I powered through because there was no time to be worried about me.
***
Saturday we committed to having lunch with the family – brothers fam and my parents.
So I took the twins out to Barnes and Noble, bought Evan a board game and Ava a plush she wanted and then headed over to meet up for lunch. As I sat at the table, my right eye started to throb… always that side. Then that side of my scalp. So I immediately took my sumatriptan (rescue meds) because I could feel what was coming. My mom gets pretty drunk nowadays. She’s really weird. I don’t even recognize her anymore, but whatever. I had one half glass of wine because she insisted – knowing the meds would start to make me loopy soon. I hoped the interaction wouldn’t be too bad but I also was hoping I would get to enjoy the feeling so I didn’t get too stressed in the interaction with my family. I was lucky the meds worked really well that evening.
At one point at lunch, Ava asked about my tattoo in front of everyone… I responded with a simple explanation but I got a judging look from my brother and my parents. It was tense. I told her, it was a representation of being an artist. But you know what I wish I would have said?
I got it after your dad died because he was such a big part of my identity and I felt very lost after he died. I got it to remind myself of the one part of my personality that has always been mine and is something no one can take away from me – that’s my creativity. It represents all of that and the career I built on top of that creativity. I got it for me and I don’t really give a fuck what anyone else thinks about it.
Maybe I’ll tell her that one day.. when she’s older.
We had an okay evening, my head continued to throb lightly and I felt pretty foggy and out of it, but Evan was so excited to play his new game, so we played it and Ava was on my “team” even though this game had no teams lol. We finished that one and then played another in which he got kind of rude/pouty, so I had to practice asserting boundaries with him. It always makes me tense, but I think it went okay. We finished up the evening watching a zombie show as I counted down the hours until I got to sleep.
***
The next day I woke up with my neck stiff as usual. I had gotten a room with some free hotel points at a local hotel with a nice indoor pool so we headed over there after breakfast. We swam around for a few hours, played some games and chatted which was nice…but all the while the pain started to intensify. We played a word game called catch phrase and I started to have trouble playing; I usually am snappy, but I started to stare blankly at the kids when they waited expectantly for me to react. It was actually kind of funny, except for the fact that my head hurt lol.
The weekends the twins come over Rich is generally pretty accommodating. But I can tell, it wears him out – just like it does me. Except, as you may know, I tend to keep going regardless of my personal feelings of exhaustion or stress. I could tell while we were at the pool he just wanted to chill and be left alone. But that leaves me alone to deal with the kids and I know it’s a lot to ask, but its literally one weekend every once in a while. I generally try to be the one that leads and plays with them and initiates activities, but they’re sometimes hard to entertain – especially Evan. He can be difficult, rude, impatient, hyperactive, and just generally lack boundaries. He’s getting better at reading mine though… a lot better as I institute them more readily. It’s good practice for both of us.
Rich got a little stressed, with figuring out the logistics of having our things in the room when we technically needed to be checked out by 1pm, but we could stay in the pool all day if we wanted. He said he’d go back up to get our things before check-out but he was annoyed that we didn’t bring it down with us when we were getting ready. Then, when he did go back upstairs, he only brought his things. So I had to go back up and get the kids stuff.. and then in my rush I accidentally left our key in the room.
I’ve locked my hotel key in my room so, so, many times in my life, owing to my frequent travel and forgetfulness, it’s never a big deal. But when he realized I’d make that mistake he was bordering on angry with me. In my head, I reacted with shock, but externally, I calmly told him, that it’s not a big deal. Just go to the front desk and get a new key – they will do it free of charge. He turned around and did so and it wasn’t a big deal. But it hurt.
It hurt that he didn’t realize how big this weekend is for me. How much stress I was under even when I looked like I was having a good time. I’m not sure he even knew, or if he did, he hasn’t brought it up. I wanted to cry when he got upset with me but I didn’t. I kept my calm and continued helping the twins get ready to leave as they scrambled to comb through their stuff I’d brought down in a heap haha.
I thought about bringing the whole thing up to Rich later… about how I felt, but I let it go as I’m prone to do. He would just react like a wounded bird no matter how nicely I put it and in the scope of things, it’s not a big deal. That and there was about to be a very big distraction for me and I would need his support more than ever.
We took the kids to lunch at IHOP cause thats what they wanted and we didn’t want to wait for a table for eight of us (my brother’s fam added four). So the four of us went next door and as I sat down at the table I started to realize that despite taking my meds in the car, I was too late and I wasn’t okay. I didn’t have time to take the meds any earlier between running around getting our things together and dealing with Rich.
Waves of nausea were starting to hit me and my scalp and eye were throbbing. When the kids food arrived I couldn’t take it. The smells and sounds of eating almost made me vomit right on the table. I apologized to the kids and excused myself from the table. Told them I’ll be okay, just finish eating and I’ll be in the car.
I laid down in the back seat trying to get a handle on how I felt. Unfortunately, with these kinds of migraines laying down seems like the natural thing to do but it almost intensifies the pain. So I sat there clutching my stomach trying not to throw up. It’s like having the worst hangover descend upon you in a matter of 15 min without any of the fun of drinking and socializing and then it gets worse.
I moved to the front seat in anticipation of the group joining me after they were done eating. There was no pause in my pain. It was like someone continued to dial up the intensity to a max level. Someone was shoving an ice pick through my eye, my stomach was churning and aching, and all the blood vessels in my face were sensitive to the touch, they were swelling and on fire. I cried and whimpered, and stopped myself because I knew it would only make things worse. Do you know what that feels like? To need to cry out of sheer physical pain but doing so will only hurt you more? It’s absolute torture. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
So I sat there for a few minutes, stifling cries of pain and in a moment of desperation I hunched over the dashboard and started punching it as hard as I could hoping to injure my hand or wrist in an effort to distract from the intense pain in my head, my brain was melting. The pain traveled down my neck and down the sides of my spine. I could barely take it. I tried to breathe like it would help at all.
Eventually, I heard the kids and everyone pile in. I explained I was feeling a little sick but that this just happened to me sometimes. We rode home and I tried to keep an upbeat spirit, so as not to worry them, but secretly I was dying. Rich notoriously drives slow, so this didn’t help. We made it home and I told the kids I loved them and gave them a hug and apologized for not being able to drop them off personally. Rich was kind enough to offer to take them home without me.
I headed upstairs, got in some PJs and hunched over the toilet in anticipation of puking my guts out. But strangely enough that position felt good to me, it was standing that made me feel awful. Putting my head down on a pillow was painful, anything touching my head was painful, even my own hands. Lights were painful, smells were painful, everything was pain. Sometimes when I get an attack like this, it’s like I just need to keep moving because if I sit still, all I can focus on is the pain.
So, I would walk around until I got nauseous, then walk to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to vomit, then nothing. So I would get back up from the bathroom floor, then try to lay down, hurt too much… or got nauseous again.. back to the bathroom… nothing… back to bed. And so on for a good hour or two before the meds finally affected me enough to get me to sleep.
I fell asleep face down in a pillow with only a sliver of enough room to breathe. I woke up like that confused that I’d fallen asleep at all. I lay in bed, sad, anxious, exhausted, spent. And on top of everything, guilty that I had to bow out from part of the weekend with the twins. Even if it was the very end, I felt horrible I didn’t get to drop them off like I always did. When I was feeling a little better I texted them to thank them for visiting me, I apologized for bowing out early, and told them that I had a lot of fun and couldn’t wait for next time. I know I don’t have to phrase it this way, I just liked to.
***
Monday. Postdrome. Still ongoing at 7pm. I wanted so badly to take the day off, but I had meetings I needed to attend to. So I powered through, and I was rewarded by being able to eat a little lunch – first meal since some cereal the morning before. Just a small bowl of noodles, but it stayed down. I tried to take a nap but kept getting flashbacks.
So, I wrote this post and then I went to physical therapy in the afternoon and my PT, who’s awesome, asked how my weekend was. We got on the topic of house selling, and I told him about closing on my brother’s house this week. He paused…and I explained that he had died a year ago. And then he did something that took me off guard. After he expressed his condolences…
He asked me if I was okay.
Of all the people I’ve told about my brother out in the wild so few people have asked me that. They’ve offered your typical condolences or said general supportive things but… I don’t know. I don’t think anyone has just asked how I was doing so far out from the event. It hit different. It felt real. I said “yeah…” but I kind of didn’t know what to say. It was just, so kind. I guess, you don’t really run into that in the natural world super often. And I don’t even know if I can articulate why it felt different. After a long weekend, of ignoring all the emotional pain that, had the twins not been here, would likely have been the focus of the weekend… I guess it just felt nice not to ignore it. To admit, that it matters, and that it’s real and affects me even if just for a moment.
After my session, the postdrome and dull lingering headache and fog lessened. I drove home and cried a little on my commute. I felt a little relief and it was a nice reminder that there are still kind people in this world; that maybe I don’t always have to pretend that things are okay because there are still people out there willing to listen.