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Second-Guessing Game
October 1st, 2009
Does this sound at all familiar to you? This is me, talking to me, inside my head:
- My head hurts.
- Oh, it’s 5:00, I’m supposed to leave in 20 minutes to meet J for a farewell drink, maybe this pain will just go away.
- My head hurts.
- I hate to miss J, this is my last chance to see her before she moves away, my head’s not bad, could be just a twinge, maybe it will pass…
- I had a Migraine last night and I haven’t felt fully recovered all day. It’s probably recurring. I should take a triptan now.
- If I take the triptan I definitely can’t go out. This is just minor pain. I can probably still go if I just ignore it.
- Don’t be ridiculous! You need to work tomorrow more than you need to see J tonight!
- Okay, I’m staying home. I’ll call J and say goodbye and I’ll write her a nice note - but I’m not taking a triptan because I took one yesterday and I keep getting head pain in the evenings - I might need one later in the week.
So I stayed in and didn’t take the triptan - and about 10 my head was pounding and I felt nauseous. At that point I took the triptan, and some anti-nausea meds, and tried to go to sleep. I slept badly, with pain in my head nearly all night. I kept waking and checking the clock to see if 2 hours had gone by so I could take another triptan. Then I slept a bit longer and woke after 2, still in lots of pain, and took the second dose. Slept fitfully and around 5 noticed that the pain had let up a good bit. Woke with the alarm at 7.
- I’m supposed to be in court at 9:30 - should I go?
- My head still hurts and I shouldn’t be driving.
- It hardly hurts at all and it might be all gone in a few hours, maybe I could get a ride.
- This Migraine is not 100% gone and I could easily re-trigger it, especially since I had one the day before - I need to break out of this cycle and not keep provoking it.
- People are counting on me to be there. It’s too late to find someone to stand in for me. I’ll be messing up a lot of people’s schedules.
- If you’re sick, you’re sick. If you had the flu they wouldn’t expect you to come to court.
- This isn’t the flu - it’s not that clear-cut; I might be just fine once I get going.
- The stress of having to perform and be coherent when your brain is recovering is going to make it more likely that you get another Migraine, or continue this one.
- I can’t easily make up the money I would be making today - no one gives me paid sick time, and we need what I can earn!
- If you make yourself sicker you’ll miss more days, and miss more opportunities to earn.
So I called the court and told them I was ill and could not come in. I went back to sleep and woke up a few hours later, to this:
- I probably could have done it… other people do it…
I’m not sure they ever shut up, those voices in our heads. But here I am, several hours later, head still hurting, trying to make what I can of the day. Just a Migraineur, intermittently impaired, working around it the best I can.
- Megan
Tags: internal dialogue, migraine, self care, self-doubt, triptans
Posted in Musings | Comments (14)
14 Responses to “Second-Guessing Game”
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October 1st, 2009 at 11:56 am
Yes, Megan - this is all too painfully familiar…
October 1st, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Whew! So glad I’m not alone…
October 1st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I also have a constantly running inner dialogue regarding what I am or should be doing. My inner voice is a nag and kind of a bully.
I’m all, “I should beg off for the family dinner. I’m grumpy and in pain, no one will have fun.” Then my inner voice goes, “Suck it up, whiny baby! Get yourself together and blah blah blah…”
It’s like I have my own personal drill sergeant in my head. :p
October 1st, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Personal drill sergeant, yes! Who is harder on us than we would ever be on someone else.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I do EXACTLY the same thing and have the same inner dialogue - although my husband says sometimes I say it all out loud to myself - still inner dialogue.
sometimes I push it anyway and end up worse.
sometimes I call in sick and feel massive guilt.
sometimes I put off meds in case I need later and that always is a bad idea.
A doctor once told me - more than one actually - that it takes 3X the amount of pain medication to bring down your pain once it is at full scale than if you take something right away when it starts. And yet I still go through the dialogue and choose to put it off - especially if it’s my shot I can only take 2X a week.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:09 am
I did the exact same thing the other night too. The sad thing about this is I had the same conversation with my doctor during my last visit. I asked her point blank about her Migraines which led into this same conversation. She also admitted she has done this even though she tries to take the triptan as quickly as she can. I wish I had listened the other night. I would have been much better off too and would have salvaged my day.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:38 am
I usually don’t delay taking the triptan any more; this time it led to a much more severe and long-lasting Migraine than my usual. But the inner nag doesn’t listen…
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:43 am
I have had migraines since I was about 13, I am 39 now. I also have had these conversations with myself for years. I woke up October 17, 2000, & I had a migraine, like we all do I had the argument should I go, I need to go. I was at work about 2 hours, then next thing I know I wake up in the hospital 3 days later. I was disoriented to say the least, then the Dr proceeds to tell me that at 29yrs old I had a mild stroke. I had weakness on my left side, nothing devastating, it just felt heavy. Over the next 5 yrs I saw countless numbers of Drs that had egos to big to admit they had no idea what was wrong with me. I finally found a Dr that listened, & sent me to a rheumetologist. He ran boatloads of tests, & he told me, everything from my past records, & what tests he ran he felt that I had Lupus. He felt that the migraines were “Lupus Migraines”, possibly the stroke was caused by vasculitis.
Had I not gone to work, I would have been at home in bed alone. If you stay home alone with a migraine, let someone know, so that they can check on you.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I love this post, Megs. I’m sure all Migraineurs can relate. You articulated it beautifully and I hope non-Migraineurs can see that we have this inner dialogue all the time. One time, someone in my family was upset with me because she wanted me to go to something and had gotten it in her head that I was going to say I had a Migraine and couldn’t go. That in itself made me angry, but that is beside the point.
That morning, I was in fact having the same inner-dialogue you described. Back and forth. Laying in bed, eating breakfast, Put my clothes on thinking maybe I could make it work. Then brushing my teeth…I realized…nope no way, I needed to take meds and go back to bed.
And then when I told this person I was unable to go, she got angry. Well, I had to finally tell her, doesn’t she know that I would *love* to go out and do what we’d planned nad how hard it is for me to cancel. The inner dialogue we go through is exhausting in and of itself and sometimes a bit torturous.
Anyone who has had this experience of inner dialogue about Migraine would *never* use Migraine as an excuse to get out of something. We know the truth about how difficult it actually is to make the decision not to do something because of our Migraine! (sorry for the Migraine-brain rambling)
great post.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I constantly have a similar monologue.
Should I do this? It will probably make it worse but opting out isn’t fair to my friends/family. If I take care of myself, take my abortive, and sleep, then I might not feel like walking death. But then I question if I really needed to do all that or if I could have just “pushed through.” It’s the stupid part of my brain that refuses to comprehend what this illness truly is. Knowing others are going through the same pain, quandaries, and second guesses… it helps make it more real..
October 4th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I have silent migraines. All the symptoms, just not the pain of a headache. Finally got a diagnosis of silent migraine, thought that I was going crazy. Numbness in my left arm and face, ears stopped up, rats runnning in my left vision. Even had brain surgery, and it didn’t help.
October 5th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Nicole thanks for your warning. It is important for us to keep the risks in mind. That’s actually what this month’s conference call is going to be about.
Kelly that’s a good point, how very wearing the inner dialogue itself is. It’s no fun, this second-guessing game!
Anna thanks for sharing - it makes a difference to all of us to know we’re not alone.
Debbie I could say I’m glad you don’t have the head pain, but it must have been very scary to have all those symptoms and not know what was going on. So sorry to hear you had to go through brain surgery! I hope now you have a diagnosis that you can avoid triggers and maybe use medications to try and limit those Migraines. Let me know if I can help - you might want to check out my e-course for some basic Migraine management info - sign-up in the upper right corner of the page.
Ciao, y’all!
October 5th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Wow, what to ask? I need a new neurologist. I can tell when they are coming on. Before I knew what they were, I truly thought that I was going crazy. I read the symptoms and cried, because that is exactly what happens. The numb tingling in the left side of my face and my left arm. I have been in the hospital for a stroke because of this! My ears stop up like sinus pressure. My mouth on the left side goes nimb enough that I think that I am drooling. And I get so tired but I can’t sleep. I see things running in my periferal (ok,you spell it) vision. Dizzy like inner ear. Then it goes away and I am so exhausted. For a day or so. Then fine for almost a day, and it start again. I take something that I don’t remember them name once a day, and it seems to control it somewhat. I was taking something else, a toposomething, and that made me violently sick. I’ll sign up for the newsletter. Aren’t the triggers different for everyone? Any help you can be would be fantastic!
October 7th, 2009 at 5:27 am
My head won’t shut up either. Do I? Don’t I? Take the med? Wait it out? Take a nap? ice pack?
Ack. Never always clear cut. a few months ago I was struggling with the decision to go to the ER after having a migraine for 12 days.
My head is not always my friend.
Sorry we’re in the same Migraine club. Nice to read you though.