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Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category

Knowing what to rage against

January 17th, 2008

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”  Dylan Thomas

What’s important is to know what to rage against. How do I fight the good fight, and not the losing battle? It does me no good to fight the fact of my disease – where my fight is best placed is in finding help for myself and others, learning more, educating more, fighting to live a good life. But I forget that, frequently. I’m sure you never do that – I must be the only one who gets angry at this stupid disease!

Tuesday night I felt the steel band tighten around my temples. The gentle light behind the stained glass shade began to drill unbearably into my eyeballs. Dinner was cooked and eaten, homework done or well underway. My plan for the evening involved chatting with my husband, paying bills, loading the dishwasher, some reading. Nothing ambitious or exciting. My plan did not involve a migraine.

I laid my head on Danny’s chest. “Another one?” he asked. I nodded. “Why don’t you go upstairs?” “I will,” I said, “I’ll just try and load the dishwasher.” (Fighting the disease.) “Don’t overdo it,” he said. So I went into the kitchen, and put a plate, a glass, a fork into the dishwasher, bending slightly. The pain gathered over my right eyebrow for its opening move – a faint whack. “Okay, that’s enough!” I said, and laughed a little. (Acceptance.)

So I went upstairs, turned the lights low in the bedroom and settled in. The pounding was slowly starting, so I took my Imitrex. It was 8:30 at night. I could have gone to sleep. I could have read a little and gone to sleep. But I was mad. I was downright disgusted. I wanted to be entertained. I turned on the tv. The flickering screen bothered me, but the pain never got intense enough for me to back down. I stayed up until 11:30, watching a movie I wasn’t even enjoying. I had to keep the sound low to protect my head. I had to mute the commercials and avert my eyes from them. At 11:30 the migraine began to break through the imitrex. I went to sleep.

I woke exhausted at 6 in the morning, on insufficient sleep, to the kitchen fill of dishes. My son was grumpy and didn’t want to get up. I was the world’s most put-upon human being. I plunged my hands into the greasy dishwater, yelled at my son, and cried. My head was tight, threatening another round. But I pulled myself together, made the kids breakfast, got the dishwasher running, the kids out to the bus, checked my work schedule and went back to bed for an hour. I got up and went to work – realizing that it wasn’t the kids or the dishes or even the migraine I was mad at, it was me, my own self, for not taking care of me.

Acceptance is not giving up. Acceptance is going with the flow, with the grain, in the groove. Acceptance is the feet on the ground. Inspiration, striving, creation, possibility is the arms reaching for the sky. Let me have my feet on the ground and my arms up to the sky. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Viva la difference!
– Megan

Reaching for Serenity

Tags: acceptance, anger, Dylan Thomas, imitrex, migraine, rage against the dying of the light, serenity prayer
Posted in Managing, Musings | Comments (2)

Pain on the rebound

January 14th, 2008

Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can. Victor Hugo

The worst pain I have known was not in childbirth. My brother, who is a physical therapist, told me that he sometimes asks women (if they have given birth) how the pain of the physical therapy compares with labor pains. I have had migraines that were worse than any labor pains. I have had injuries worse than any labor
pains.

At the end of labor pains comes a blessed event, a birth, the beginning of a life. We finally meet this child who has kicked, wriggled and squirmed inside us all these months. And physical therapy is pain tomake better an injury, to cause healing, improve function. The outcome lacks the drama of birth, but at least we suffer the pain for a good cause.

The worst pain I ever felt was when I broke and dislocated my elbow. The birth theme comes into it – I broke it 8 months pregnant with my second child. I had dropped my daughter at nursery school and was taking an early morning walk, dutifully keeping fit and getting ready for labor. I stepped on a patch of black ice and slipped. My feet flew to the left
and I came down on the heel of my right hand, with my arm extended and elbow locked, taking the entire weight of my pregnant body on that arm. I managed to walk the two blocks back to the nursery school, crying with pain. I walked in and interrupted the teacher and parent who were talking in the doorway, said “Excuse me, I think I broke my arm,” and promptly went into shock.

I have had migraines where I cried with the pain, crying making the pain worse, I moaned with the pain, moaning making the pain worse, I vomited from the pain, vomiting making the pain worse. The best that can be said for a migraine like that is that you know it will pass, in a few hours or many, that this will not
be forever.

I can’t speak to severe chronic pain – I know there is pain that makes people wish to die. I can speak
to moderate chronic pain – the pain of daily headaches, pain that nags, wears you down, beats you, backs
down some, comes back. When I had medication rebound headaches, I learned that I had to endure the pain to get to the point where I would stop rebounding. And since I am sensitive to medications, this has happened more than once.  And so I learn it again.

When I had a dislocated elbow, the worst part was when the doctor “reduced” the dislocation in the ER, popping it back into place. Few things make me scream aloud. That did. That was the worst pain I ever felt. Worse than the break, worse than any migraine, worse than labor pains, or my herniated disk, or my other broken arm. And as soon as it was over, when the elbow was back in place, even still broken, the pain ended.

So yes, this is my (tortured) analogy. This is where I was heading. My heart goes out to everyone in pain. Seek comfort and pampering as best you can. If you are having rebound headaches, just like reducing the dislocation, just like physical therapy, the pain will lead to a good outcome – enduring it, moving through it, will end it.  I’m sorry it’s not a magic pill.  It’s the best I’ve got.  Just hope.

– Megan

Feeling well, wishing you the same

morning breaks courtesy of lida rose

Tags: chronic pain, rebound headache
Posted in Musings | Comments (1)

Our ancestress – a fable

January 10th, 2008

Back in prehistory, in hunter-gatherer days, imagine the dangers faced by a tribe of cave-dwellers. There were saber-tooth cats, cave bears, cave lions, cave-ins, earthquakes, floods, not to mention the dangers inherent in any group of humans living together in close quarters – the dangers of disagreement, of in-fighting and division, breaking the group apart. Such a tribe would need to work as a unit to survive, putting the good of the group above that of individuals, having a role for each group member to play.

Imagine, in such a society, the value of a highly sensitive individual. An individual whose nervous system was very finely tuned, perceptive of danger, aware of undercurrents. An individual who could function efficiently under high levels of stress, at least for a short time. Such an individual could serve as the tribe’s early warning system. Feeling the tremors first, perhaps, grabbing the children out of the way of the predator, warning tribal leaders of undercurrents of division among the group. Sometimes she saw visions, light and color, patterns and pictures only she could see. Imagine that such an individual would be highly valued, would have status, might even be a preferred mate and therefore be more likely to reproduce to hand down her sensitivity to later generations.

She was the one with the migraine brain. And when the crisis passed, her nervous system would let down not with a sigh, but with a crashing, pounding, nauseating headache. With blinding pain, light and sound sensitivity. What use was the migraine to the group, let alone the individual? None at all. Evolutionary traits often carry consequences – the useful sensitivity comes with a tendency to break down when tolerance limits are passed. Migraine is a side-effect of a highly sensitive nervous system. But while the migraine itself did not serve the group, the individual with the migraine brain did, and so we imagine she was cared for, not cast aside as disabled and weak, but nurtured through her crisis, as she had supported the tribe through its crisis.

We are her descendents, and our migraine brains are the same as hers was, all those millennia ago. We are highly sensitive, often artistic, intuitive, perceptive of others’ feelings. We generally function well under stress or in a crisis, to a point.  We handle a high degree of stress and go into hyper-drive, accomplishing great things, to a point. But our world is very different from that of our ancestress. We rarely face a saber-toothed cat or a danger of that magnitude. But we face a world of unremitting stimulation, information, noise, flashing light, increasing demands on our time, our brains, our emotions. We face a constant high level of stress. Human brains are not suited to cope with life in the 21^st century, especially not migraine brains.

– Megan Oltman

Making Rain out of Migraine

lightning image courtesy of Ian Boggs

Tags: evolution, migraine, Migraine brain, sensitive nervous system
Posted in Musings | Comments (5)