RSS FEED

Posts Tagged ‘migraine’

Migraine Haiku – Just for the Fun of it

October 23rd, 2008

We’ve got to laugh, otherwise we’ll cry.  And you know crying is just going to make your head hurt worse, so why do it?  Migraine Chick can always make me laugh, whether the deep belly laugh of recognition, or the delighted giggle of the absurd.  She has published a book collecting her Migraine Haiku, together with her priceless illustrations, which is available at Migraine Chick Cafe Press for $13.95.  I ordered mine.

Would you like your Migraines with or without giggles?  I prefer mine with.  I haven’t yet found the menu with just giggles, no Migraines.

– Megan Oltman

Fluffy chick and migraine haiku image copyright 2008 by Migraine Chick, of course.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Books, Silliness | Comments (0)

The Complicated Relationship Between Migraines and Depression: Blog Carnival

October 16th, 2008


Diana Lee has brought us another great stack of reading with the October Headache and Migraine Disease Blog Carnival.  Generally speaking, a blog carnival is a
collection of links to a variety of a blogs on a central topic. The
Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival has been created to
provide both headache patients and people who blog about headaches with
unique opportunities to share ideas on topics of particular interest
and importance to us.

Exploring the relationship between Migraines and depression, there are a number of thought provoking posts, some on this topic and some on others.  As if coping with the pain, nausea and disability wasn’t enough, depression and Migraine are co-morbid conditions, often occurring together.  When we have a Migraine attack, one of the effects is that serotonin levels are depleted.  So even for those of us who do not grapple with depression on an ongoing basis, bouts of depression around Migraine attacks are common.  I hope you go over to Somebody Heal Me and read some of these posts – and I hope they help you manage your own brain!

– Megan Oltman

Tags: , ,
Posted in Weblogs | Comments (0)

Health Insurance Headaches

October 8th, 2008


Warning – Full blown rant ahead.  I am so upset I can hardly stand it.  I think my head may explode.  I know I have criticized the media for using Migraine loosely to describe a hassle, but I’m using it literally here.  My health insurance company, which is supposed to guard and foster my health, is about to give me a bona fide Migraine!  Adrenaline triggered, high blood pressure triggered, crying triggered, you name it.  And then they won’t want to pay for my medication.

I just received a notice that as of November 1, my health insurance premiums will go up by over 60%.  I receive group insurance through a professional association, and so I am one of those self-employed small business owners who is paying for my own premiums.  These are the group rates, mind you, if I tried to get my own insurance outside the group the premiums would be even higher.  Our health care is already the one of the largest costs in our budget, after shelter.  Higher than utilities, auto fuel, higher than food.  The monthly premium for our family of four will go up about $800, to over $2000.  And that’s just the beginning.  We already have:

That last is a doozy – take someone who is chronically ill and has trouble keeping up with paperwork, and you have a perfect formula to never have to pay on some large proportion of their claims.  Every previous insurance company I’ve had gave you 6 months to a year to submit claims.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  This company routinely loses about 1/3 of everything I send them.  So I have to keep to a very strict schedule to get everything in, then I send the claims, get nothing back, call them, they have no record, and they tell me, “Oh, if our scanner can’t read it, it’s destroyed.”  Destroyed.  I pay these people over $15,000 a year, soon to be over $24,000 and they destroy my paperwork?  Then I have to dig out my copies, send another set with a cover letter, and guess what, they send half of those back saying they weren’t submitted within 90 days.

To all the costs above, let’s add that I spend a good 2 days of my time every other month dealing with my health insurance claims, mostly with their screw-ups, uncompensated, of course, taking time away from earning my living.

I’m naming names here.  It’s Oxford Health Insurance, a United Healthcare Company.  They grant me the privilege of paying them an additional 60% for this abuse starting next month.  The reason?  Our group has a higher than average rate of claim submission!  Aha!  So, let’s analyze this – first of all, this is a group of coaches, whose job is to get people organized and on track to achieve their goals – maybe we have a higher than average ability to actually find our way through the impossible obstacle course that Oxford has set up to keep people from submitting claims!

But then, remind me, what’s the insurance for?  Call me naive, I thought it was there so I could afford health care!  I didn’t realize it was for the profit of the insurance company, first, foremost, and exclusively!  I’ve got no problem with business, I’m in business myself, but I do have a problem with the profit motive here, where it’s destroying the very purpose of the product!  Dare I suggest a single-payer system?  This is not auto insurance.  You raise rates on bad drivers, to give people an incentive to be good drivers.  So you raise rates on sick people to do what?  Punish them for being sick?  It is wrong to refuse insurance for pre-existing conditions.  It is also wrong to make insurance unaffordable for people who happen to use it.  That’s just a sneaky way to try not to cover conditions whether pre-existing or new.

A few days ago I said I would be non-partisan in this blog, and I don’t want to alienate anyone.  Please feel free to come here for help and support and ideas about managing life with Migraines regardless of your politics.  But I’m sorry, I can’t stay neutral here.  We have a chance to finally make a difference with our votes, a difference we sorely need.  McCain is proposing a $5000 tax credit to go straight to the insurance companies.  That won’t even pay for this premium increase, let alone make me any better off.  Does Oxford deserve even more of my money after all they already manage to take?  McCain is proposing deregulating health insurance further and encouraging more competition, letting the market take care of it.  The market is taking care of it by raising my health insurance premiums by over $9000 a year, because I have the gall to actually use my insurance!  What exactly is my family supposed to give up to pay for our health care?  Food?  Heat?

We need comprehensive, affordable health care available to all of us.  We need insurers to give sick people coverage without penalizing them.  We need this desperately.  People are being driven into ill health and poverty in this country by lack of coverage.  Barack Obama’s health care plan goes a long way down the road towards the coverage we need.  I need his plan now.  I think we all do.

– Megan Oltman

Exploding head courtesy of Alexander Iezzi.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Advocacy, Rant | Comments (4)

September Pain Blog Carnival – New Beginnings

October 1st, 2008

Greetings my friends – I know you haven’t heard a lot from me in the past week, and I’ll come tell you all about it soon.  In the meantime, I want to point you towards some good reading over at How to Cope with Pain, a site which is a great resource for many kinds of chronic pain, Migraine included.  The September Pain Blog Carnival is posted today on the theme of “New Beginnings” – in keeping with back to school and our general tendency to get back to work in the Fall.  Check it out at September Pain Blog Carnival.

Talk to you soon!

– Megan Oltman

Tags: ,
Posted in Weblogs | Comments (1)

Can You See my Pain? Can I See my Pain?

September 8th, 2008

It’s Invisible Illness Awareness Week, a worldwide effort to bring together people who live with invisible chronic illness and those who love them.

According to the Invisible Illness Blog, nearly 1 in 2 Americans have some kind of chronic illness.  From heart disease to mental illnesses, cancer, lupus, chronic fatigue, Migraine and headache disorders and many others, people are suffering all around.   While our illnesses may be invisible, giving no outward visual signs, why are they so unknown to those around us?

The statistics on Migraine disease are staggering.

Given those numbers, why is this disease so misunderstood, un-researched, underfunded, and the treatment options so undeveloped?  Why do so many people, even doctors, think it’s “just a headache”? There’s enough for several more posts in answer to that question, but I think invisibility is one of the major reasons.

Think about the invisibility of head pain.  Unless someone is highly attuned to changes in our eyes and expressions, or the cue of hand to forehead, they will not know when we have a Migraine attack.  It’s not like they can see the hammer knocking us on the head!  Even more significantly, perhaps, it’s hard for others to understand how we might feel fine today, but be unable to get out of bed tomorrow.  It’s hard to understand the long term consequences of frequent or chronic pain.  Migraine can increase stroke risk, and Migraine disease can cause brain damage over time: this is recent knowledge.

There is much we can do to educate others, to explain to those around us, to rally for more research, to insist on accommodations at work and adequate treatment from doctors, emergency rooms, and insurance companies.  But I think one foundation of the problem lies in how invisible this illness even to ourselves.

Last week I practiced saying “I am chronically ill.”  I said it to a number of different people, and told it to myself in the mirror.   Big deal?  It is a big deal.  It is the reality of my life for most of the last 13 years, yet I have a very hard time accepting it.  I am a meticulous record keeper.  I keep a very detailed Migraine and Wellness diary where I track not only Migraines but my sinus infections, my fatigue, and my dizziness, among other things.  I can tell you that over the past 4 years, I have been sick, with my ability to function significantly reduced, 25% of the time.  It’s probably higher than that, because I have a lot of Migraines in the evening, but if I have worked and functioned most of the day, I have counted that as a well day.

I am one of the lucky ones.  Many chronically ill people are sick more than half the time.  Since I am in business for myself, I can set my work up to be flexible and take the time I need for myself.  My ability to meet deadlines and my income do suffer.  Imagine having a job, and needing to take 6 sick days per month.  That’s what my numbers translate to.

Those are the facts, and yet it is very hard to accept that I am chronically ill.  If you’re not sick every day, it’s easy to fall into denial again.  To forget that there are limitations to what I can do.  That even when I feel great I need to be very cautious and marshal my energy.   That things I used to do are not
available to me any more.  That I need to adjust the standards I have measured myself by.

I need to be as kind, forbearing, patient, understanding and loving towards myself as I would be to a friend who was chronically ill.  Why is that so hard?  I need to accept where I am without giving up hope, and while still striving to take better care of myself, get better treatment, do everything I can to be as well as I can be.

When I am caring for myself in this way (and I do manage it at times), it is easier for me to be real with the people around me.  To explain my illness, to help them understand.  I need to have my illness visible to me; then I can help make it visible to others.

– Megan Oltman

Tags: , ,
Posted in Advocacy, Communicating, Managing | Comments (2)

Migraine, Chronic Illness and the Not So Happy Homemaker, or All in a Labor Day’s Work

September 1st, 2008

I do not claim to have ever been a great homemaker. I enjoy well organized space. I enjoy design, and
line, and tweaking the environment around me for comfort, beauty, and efficiency. So perhaps I am a perpetually frustrated homemaker, because these joys are rarely ever mine. I live in a state of clutter, disorganization, confusion and catch-up. Uh-oh, now I’ve told the truth. Will you ever listen to what I have to say again?

Wherever you start on the spectrum from neat-freak to pig-pen, Migraine and chronic illness will hamper your ability to get it all done. I remember a time before my Migraines and sinus infections became frequent, before chronic fatigue reared its ugly head, and, let’s face it, before I had children, when my home was tidy on a weekly basis, at least. When Danny and I first moved in together I wanted to get up on Saturday morning and get the housework over with, and then enjoy the rest of the weekend. He wanted to lounge around on Saturday morning and get to it later. Which generally meant we’d be cleaning at 5 pm, when we had plans to go out later, and we would do less than I wanted, and I would worry about it and not get to relax at all. But this is a blog about Migraine, right, not about relationships?  I thought that issue was difficult at the time. What I deal with now is of a different order of magnitude.

I have a generous, hard-working and willing husband who tries to maintain order in our home, with or without my help. He is also a fabulous cook and does most of the cooking. I have a nearly adult daughter who is a willing helper when she has the time, and a son who has come a long way with being helpful. I am also the one of the four of us who is not diagnosed with ADHD. This means I am the only one who can really multi-task. It means I’m the only one who notices a lot of the clutter. It means that I am the Captain of this house. So if the Captain is in sick bay, the ship may end up on the rocks.

I have had, this past 12 months, the worst year for Migraine and the year with the most sick days, since I began my Migraine and wellness diary 5 years ago. That means the house is in an advanced state of mess. It had never been tidy, but it’s worse than usual. Deborah at Weathering Migraine Storms posts about her craft projects and I feel jealous – I love crafting too, but it seems pointless to decorate when everything is a mess. The energy I’d like to spend on creativity, or on organizing, is so often taken up with the basics, dishes, kitchen counters, laundry.

But I have to stop and count my blessings. Unlike some Migraineurs, I can still work for a living. So if my energy and time is limited, and I spend it helping to keep a roof over my family’s head, I can’t fault myself for the state of things under that roof.

My advice to you, and me: cut yourself some slack. Do the best you can and take the time to enjoy life.  Keep blocking out your time in the calendar to make the most of the time you have, working from your priorities.  See More Time Management for Migraineurs: Managing the Time we Have for some more ideas on how to do that.  As for me, today I’m post-drome and having some vertigo. I am doing my best to make my way through a back-log of dishes (the dishwasher is broken) and fold the laundry, with plenty of resting time in between. Happy Labor Day!

– Megan Oltman

Dirty dishes image courtesy of Easternblot – eva.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Managing, Musings, Tips & Techniques | Comments (2)

this time it doesn’t even rhyme

August 30th, 2008

Who’s that trying to remove my brain?

Crack my skull and scoop it out like an egg?
Maybe they’re trying to get me to leave –
If they whack me on the temple a few more times
I might leave town, you never know.

Who’s that trying to remove my brain?
last week they tried grapefruit spoons –
serrated edges scraped my skull – is it sectioned inside like a fruit?

This week blunt instruments are in vogue
I wish they’d learn some anger management.

I wish they’d stop trying to remove my brain.
What did I ever do to them?
Maybe they don’t like silly poetry
Made up by a migraine-addled red-head.
They’re over-reacting, I swear.

There must be someone trying to remove my brain

I know they’re trying to remove my brain.
It hurts like they’re trying to remove my brain –
crack my skull with a nutcracker and pick out the meat
couldn’t just be my own neurons going nuts…
Could it?

– Megan

Coming to you from Migraine Central

Soft-boiled egg image courtesy of Sharon Mollerus; grapefruit image courtesy of x-eyedblonde; walnut image courtesy of Masayoshi Sekimura.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Silliness | Comments (2)

Can Crying be Bad for You?

August 15th, 2008

I believe firmly that it is good to express our emotions, rather than suppress them.  Sometimes we
just need to cry.  Crying on a friend’s shoulder.  Weeping at a funeral.  I’ve had several such completely appropriate crying occasions this summer.  Both times I got Migraines.  Today I have a sinus infection.   It’s a crying shame!

I am speculating here, and make no claims to scientific accuracy in this post.  I’m wondering about the physiology of crying.  It’s more than just salty water running down your face.  I don’t know if anyone really cries like they do in the movies, or in literature, delicate trails of tears, without anything swelling, nothing disgusting.  I’ve certainly never been able to achieve that.  For me, crying involves swollen nasal passages, a red blotchy puffy face, a fountaining nose.  Altogether much yuck.  Crying is a well-known Migraine trigger.  I suspect the good old trigeminal nerve must be involved – it runs right through and controls all the regions involved in a sob-fest.  And then it must get irritated, and set those neurons on their merry way, doing their haywire Migraine thing.

I don’t know if I can explain the sinus infection this way, but I’ll try.  I’m not suggesting spontaneous generation – there must have been an infectious agent.  Who knows what rhinoviruses lurked at the airport, on the plane, in the rental cars, in the colleges and even friends’ homes we visited.   But I suspect that my crying must have swollen passages and shut down my tiny sinus ducts, trapping some opportunistic organisms, backing things up and leading to infection.

Yesterday I attended a very sad memorial service.  A friend lost his wife – a bright, funny, lovely woman of 37.  Witnessing his pain, and the pain of her parents and siblings, all of her friends, his friends…  Well there was much weeping.  Completely appropriate weeping.  I felt knocked out for the rest of the day, and by evening I had a Migraine, my throat was sore and my sinuses were doing their nasty thing.  Today I think the weeping is still going on – just inside my head rather than on my face.

Like so many things that can trigger us, crying can’t be avoided.  It’s part of life.  Probably I would have gotten this infection anyway.   So I will remember LM from my bed today, drink lots of tea, take my vitamin C and zinc and magnesium, and hope this clears up soon.

– Megan

Crying clown face image courtesy of Prakhar Amba.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Medicine, Musings | Comments (2)

Where did Megan go?

August 13th, 2008

A big gap in posts here, but not due to Migraines and illness, for once.  I took my daughter on a trip to look at four colleges in the mid-West.  Perfect weather almost all week, some very promising colleges, and we had a fun time – many hours of cracking each other up

in the car, and some lovely visits with old friends.  We were in the Windy City,

and the Twin Cities, and many miles of America’s Dairyland in between!

I had only one Migraine on the trip – the day we flew in.  The triggers were two nights of insufficient sleep, stacked with the change in altitude on the flight.  I had two marathon days of driving, which certainly exhausted me, but didn’t trigger any Migraines, I’m happy to say.  Clearly fatigue and stamina are issues for me, but I was glad not to be coping with frequent Migraines as well.  Stress may not be a direct trigger (I have my doubts) but a trip away from the daily stresses of my life is always welcome!

– Megan

Walker Sculpture Garden image courtesy of Eli Duke; Wisconsin Farm image courtesy of Randen Pederson.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Travel | Comments (3)

Silly Headache Rhymes – Frigraine Edition

August 1st, 2008

Along on Friday afternoon, I started seeing red.

A Migraine came to visit and it smacked me in the head.
It whacked me on the temple; it threw me for a loop.
I almost tossed my cookies as I staggered on the stoop.
I should have slept this morning; I should have slept last night.
I should have been born perfect, and then I could live right!

– Megan Oltman



Frigraine is what I call those sneaky Friday afternoon/evening Migraines – they always come when I’m pushing to get work completed for the week.  Not getting enough sleep Thursday night doesn’t help either.

Migraine hamster image courtesy of Anita Martinz.

Tags: ,
Posted in Silliness | Comments (2)

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Learn to Manage your Life with Migraine:

The Six Keys to Manage Your Migraines and Take Back Your Life

You will also receive a subscription to the Free my Brain Migraine Management Newsletter.

We take your privacy seriously. We will never share your information with anyone

First Name:
Email:


That disclaimer thing...
Remember: nothing we do here is medical advice or treatment or is a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Get competent medical advice to learn more about your migraines, possible treatments and risks.

What's New on
Free My Brain:

Migraine Support Group Coaching
Register Now for 50% Off Your 1st Month!







Recent Comments

Categories

Archives