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Posts Tagged ‘migraine’

Weird Migraine Trigger Winners

May 9th, 2008

It was a tough call, but our judges Kerrie of The Daily Headache and Diana of Somebody Heal Me have selected our winners in the Weirdest Migraine Triggers Ever contest (with yours truly called in as a
tie-breaker).

Remember, these triggers were all weird enough to beat my pouring-down-rain-with-wiper-arm-scratching-windshield trigger!

And a drumroll please, the winners are:

1st Place to Koryn for the Crayon Dilemma (note – no gold crayon used in photo):

The weirdest trigger that I’ve ever came across was one of my step aunts. Since
a very young age, the gold crayon in her crayon box would induce a migraine. No
other gold colored other stuff, or real gold its self does anything, but just
the gold crayon. Strangeness.  All my step aunt had to do was look at her gold
crayon. Poor thing couldn’t color with it at all. Her mom ended up going through
her crayon box each year when they bought her new ones for school and take the
gold crayon out. Her teacher watched in class if the projects used crayons. Very
strange trigger.

2nd place to MJ (of Rhymes with Migraine) for the Exhaust Fan Mystery:

The last apartment DBF and I lived in was a studio, with only one large-ish
window that opened onto a courtyard. Our apartment was wedged into the corner,
which meant we had hardly any air circulation at all, especially in the summer.
This particular apartment building also had a high turnover rate among tenants,
so our neighbors changed relatively frequently.

About two months before we moved out of that apartment, I discovered a new trigger. One afternoon after work, DBF and I were minding our own business when all of a sudden this stench, an unbelievable (and unidentifiable) stench came – not wafting – but pumping into our only window. I had a migraine within seconds, as my eyes teared up and I looked desperately to
DBF, begging him to close the window. Mind you, this was the summer and our apartment did not have A/C. Neither of us could stand this stench though so he closed the window without complaint.

We complained to the leasing office the very next day, but of course when they came to check it out, no cause could be found, as there was no trace of the stench.

Unfortunately for both of us, every evening after work, like clockwork, this stench would be pumped into our apartment and we’d have to close our window. We quickly became wise to the stench’s ways and closed the window when we came home from work. We continued to complain to the leasing office, telling them we had to leave our only window closed, but they were mostly useless. They claimed the woman in the apartment below us had left for vacation
without cleaning her fridge, and her food had spoiled, which had caused the stench. But the stench continued after this problem had been cleaned up, so I was skeptical of this explanation.

Fortunately, DBF and I both have backgrounds in architecture, so we decided to investigate the source of this stench for ourselves. We noticed the exhaust vent for our downstairs neighbor’s
apartment was directly outside our window. Ah ha! At least once a day, the vent fan inside this apartment would cycle on, venting the apartment, and pumping the stench into our window. The stench would disappear again when the fan cycled off.

That same week we figured this out (this had been going on well over a month now) we dragged the apartment manager into the courtyard. We pointed out the exhaust vent and told her our theory. She got her maintenance guy and went to the woman’s apartment – which, apparently, smelled so bad that our apartment manager was gagging in the hallway. (She got no sympathy from me!) Here’s where the story gets even better. Our apartment manager, after discovering the source of the problem we had been complaining about for over a month, started to
politely request that the woman in the stinky apartment clean up her mess. The
woman did not clean up her mess. The manager was unwilling to do anything other
than knock on the woman’s door, so DBF finally taped the exhaust vent closed so
we could open our window again.

We found out later that this stench was cat funk. This awful woman
refused to clean up after her poor cat, and had been keeping its filthy
litterbox under the exhaust fan. So, I’ve now added “cat funk from rude and
filthy neighbor” to my list of triggers.

Third Place to Deborah (of Weathering Migraine Storms)  for the Dehydrate-Rehydrate-Run Conundrum (note – you can read the entire story at Weathering Migraine Storms at the link above – I have excerpted it here):

I have found a unique little trigger I gave myself while I was trying to alleviate the woes of the migraine blues. I found myself going round and round in a battle of “Catch 22” with fluids.

A word of caution – if you are in the midst of migraine and are looking to
hydrate or re-hydrate, be very cautious of the ingredients in your bottled
fluids. If they contain “sucralose” or “sucrose syrup” you may think twice before drinking twice. Why? Your body just doesn’t absorb them thar ingredients, thus you just poo them in liquid-like form, rapidly, if you continue to drink and drink and drink them.

Case in point, Moi: The first week of the month, I end up at infusion with the monster. I’m the usual squinting, “headachy” nauseaous self. (for lack of words right now), I have two bottlesof said syrupy water with me. oh yummo. Start infusion a little later. drink drink. Notice after a few days, and oh four bottles of the stuff a day, lots of diarrhea. hmmm, sometimes that
happens with migraine.

Two weeks go by, OH, WAIT! I had also started Melatonin to get some MUCH-needed
sleep. Whew, almost forgot that. so anyhoo, I’m sleeping, I’m drinking more of the water because the weather was actually getting pretty nice here. The sun was, whoa, shining, and, AND, the weather was warm. I don’t care much for water, it makes me gag, and gagging is a precursor for barfing, which will in itself is just gross, so I like the taste of the lemony syrupy
vitamin water that I was drinking. Plus, I felt I was getting all kinds of oober benifits with the added B vitamins. blah blah blah. drink more tastey syrupy water.

In the meantime, I’m noticing a need to, well, go to the “office” a little more often. than usual. Me poo has started to um loosten. By the end of the week, loosten had come to a full-on explosion. Every few hours. Which, naturally made me drink more. Didn’t want to DEHYDRATE! Each time I’d eat, my food would slide into home within 1 1/2 hours. I was running like A-rod,
faster, faster, faster each time. God forbid if I was in public!!!

Naturally, another storm hit me in the skull. The more I “liquidated my assets,” the more I drank. For fear of becoming dehydrated, it’s all I could do, drink more of my yummy water; and it hit me – like the brick that hit my head, maybe it’s the vitamins in the water doing it!! So I took myself off the water for a week.

But I was still having the. problem. So I thought, maybe the Melatonin?? I took myself off that. We decided, maybe there was something else going on; we called my internist. They had me in that day, did all kinds of blood work, and I had to (give a sample), to which I apologized for! Oh the questions the questions I was asked. When the blood work came back ok, Deb and
I were talking about the water; and I read to her the ingredients – AHA! It was the sucralose. I cannot absorb it so my body just – gets rid of it and everything else with it. I’ll say.

*(By the way, I have been informed that Glaceau Vitamin Water, pictured on the truck above, contains no sucralose or aspartame.  I didn’t mean to implicate them, I just love a pretty picture.)

And an Honorable Mention to Laura for a lengthy list of triggers, including the Antihistamine-Pollen Paradox:

• jalepenos
• sun/ heat
• too much sleep, not enough
• Alcohol (especially red wine)
• salt
• cheese
• salami/ preserved meats*
• change in air pressure
• change in altitude <- i hate that one!
• soups*
• Chinese food*
• stress letdown
• pms
• Claritin <-AGH!
• dehydration

I tell you, I live in an area where the pollen is horrible and most allergy meds
give me a severe migraine.  It’s miserable.

*(Little editorial note – wondering if the starred items all have MSG in common?  MSG is a pretty common trigger.)

Thanks to the judges and all the entrants for playing along.  And dear readers, if you have a weird trigger to share, you can leave it in the comments below.

For more about triggers, and how to avoid them, come join the discussion: Migraine Management Coaching: Know and Reduce Your Triggers.  For more on Managing your Life with Migraine, register for our e-course in the upper right corner of this page.

– Megan Oltman

Now don’t get trigger-happy!

Crayon Image courtesy of Ed Schipol, Exhaust Fan image courtesy of cito/John, Vitamin Water image courtesy of Wendy Seltzer, Bee image courtesy of Adrian Campfield

Tags: Dehydration, Managing, migraine, Odors, Pollen, Trigger
Posted in Managing, Silliness, Weblogs | Comments (5)

Migraine Poetry

May 7th, 2008

By now, I hope you’ve had a chance to read some of the wonderful poetry at the 2008 Putting Our Heads Together Migraine and Headache Poetry Contest.  Congratulations again to all the winners.  There were an enormous number of excellent entries – I don’t envy the judges!

My own entry was way down the list.  With your indulgence, I reprint it here.

Never Get Used to It

We never got used to the drunk next door
who broke bottles on the stoop past midnight, cussed all
night,
staggered into us as we left the apartment.
He was a feature of the landscape we were glad to leave

when we moved away.

Along with the upstairs landlords
whose children jumped off the couch above my head, all day,
while I napped with my newborn,
who thought 3 a.m. was a good time to install carpeting, KaChunk
KaChunk all night,
who coated the back yard in weed killer, fumes rolling into
our ground floor apartment – they were a feature of the landscape we never got
used to.
So we moved away.

We never got used to the dirty old busybody next door with
his nasty comments.

We never pulled up the blinds or trimmed the hedge on his
side of the house.
We just moved away. Again.

You’d think you’d get used to the pain – it’s a bore. There’s no excitement in pain.
Just the startled moment when it comes again, crashing like
the bottles on the stoop.
Just the deadly hours of enduring, KaChunk, KaChunk,
don’t pull up the blinds and let it look in.
Never get used to the scraping, boring, searing,
pounding.
Pain management?
I thought pain could recede, a feature of the landscape to
ignore, like the cracks in the pavement.
I never thought this was a landscape I could not move away
from.

No moving van. No
packing boxes.

No new home without the pain.
Open your boxes and find the drunken, staggering,
inconsiderate,
dirty old busybody pain.

No ear plugs. No gas
masks. No prisoners taken. No quarter given.
Never get used to it.

Respectfully submitted,

Megan Oltman

Broken Bottles image courtesy of Vertigogen Window Blinds image courtesy of Matt Callahan Packing Box image courtesy of Tim Herrick

Tags: migraine, pain, pain management, poetry
Posted in Communicating, Weblogs | Comments (4)

May Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival

May 5th, 2008

Tags: exercise, headache, migraine, Weblogs
Posted in Weblogs | Comments (0)

Update from Migraine-land

May 5th, 2008

My computer is well again, thank goodness.  And I have just been through a bad migraine patch – 6 of the last 11 days.  For those with Chronic Daily Headache or Chronic Migraine (Migraine 15 days out of the month), that may not sound too bad.  A few of my migraineur friends have lived with the same migraine for 6 weeks or 5 months.  On the other hand, for others who have 1 or 2 migraines a month, or less, that may sound awful.  I used to have 2 a year.  The good old days!

(By the way – do I have Chronic Migraine myself, or is mine still considered episodic?  I have not hit the 15 days a month marker yet, but I seem to be close some months.  We’ll see what Dr. Young has to say at the Jefferson Headache Center when I go in June.)

But life goes on.  I learn more all the time about managing this disease.  I always try to share what I am learning.   I have been thinking a lot about managing Migraine triggers.   Part of my recent bad streak is probably due to having been in a course that activated many triggers for me.  Lack of sleep, florescent lights, lots of noise, having to concentrate way beyond my fatigue point.  It took me about 4
days to recover from 2 days in that course.  It was a price I paid willingly for a useful piece of professional knowledge.  I can’t always avoid triggers.  But I will try not to do weekend courses like that without spending a few days in bed afterwards.

My friend, neurological-chiropractor Dr. Heidi Kaufman introduced me to the concept of neural fatigue.  I
haven’t found a good reference on this yet, but basically the idea is that neurons get tired out and stop functioning as well.  I experience this when I am exposed to a lot of noises at the same time – I lose my ability to sort one sound from another and all I hear is undifferentiated noise.  Parts of the course were like that, as some participants insisted in talking across the instructors.  I believe this is an instance of what Dr. Hayrunnisa Bolay described in her research findings of

a mechanism that leads to problems with discrimination of tones and
lateralization of sound, particularly in a noisy environment, in
patients with migraine.

“Cochlear Dysfunction Apparent in Migraineurs,” April 12, 2008, RM Global Health. (Thanks to Rain Gem for pointing me to this fascinating study.)

Another instance of just how weird this disease is:  for some time now when I am fatigued, I have trouble with spatial perception.  This occurs most often in a car, where I have trouble perceiving how close or far away other objects are.  It feels like everything is moving too fast for my brain to catch up, to quote one of my buddies in a recent discussion on the MMC Forum.  I find myself afraid I am going to fast, or that I am about to hit something when there is actually plenty of room.  In case you’re worrying, I pull over right away if this happens when I’m driving.  It happens most often when my husband is driving, and I flinch and gasp at what appear to me to be near misses, when actually he is leaving sufficient distance, slowing down and stopping quite appropriately.  I am wondering if this is an instance of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, an unusual sort of migraine aura which affects spatial perception.  I enjoyed this article in the NY Times blog a few months ago, and here’s a new one from Teri Robert: Alice in Wonderland Syndrome – The Basics.  Since Lewis Carroll was a migraineur himself, he may have been describing his own experience when he wrote of Alice’s strange growth and shrinking.   Adventures in Migraine-land.

I may appear to be rambling.  I may, in fact, be rambling.   I’m leading an exploration of migraine triggers right now at WEGO Health.  It’s part of a series of lessons on Migraine Management Coaching.  Please come and visit if you’d like to look more deeply into what may trigger your migraines, and how to manage your triggers!

– Megan

Now the dogwoods are blooming – life is great!

Tags: Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic migraine, cochlear dysfunction, disease management, migraine, migraine aura, neural fatigue
Posted in Managing | Comments (4)

The Weather Report inside my head (Sinus and Migraine locked in competition)

March 16th, 2008

Sniffly with a chance of coughing?  Yesterday’s migraine has transitioned into today’s sinus infection.  You don’t really want to hear about the nasty greenish glop going down the back of my throat!  I seem to have two major weather systems duking it out in here.

I’m going to try to make sense here, but the brain is not quite up to par today, so no promises.  It’s hard to think with stuff pressing on the brain – whether that’s from the inflamed blood vessels of a migraine or from blocked up sinus cavities.

I’ve been wondering for some time about the sinus/migraine connection.  In a thought-provoking article, Sinuses giving you a headache?  It’s probably Migraine! Teri Robert tells us that ” nearly 9 in 10 people with sinus headache symptoms likely are suffering from Migraines,” and Migraine not only causes pain in the sinus area, but can lead to nasal congestion as well! According to a research study  presented in 2004 at the 46th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Headache Society (AHS), “real” sinus headache is only present when there is a sinus infection, which typically involves fever, lots of green or yellow mucus, and swollen lymph nodes.I have to say, as one who has clear and obvious Migraines, (pounding pain in one or both temples, with extreme light and sound sensitivity) and clear and obvious sinus infections (with the green glop of doom, swollen glands and fever), the study raises as many questions as it answers.  To quote Teri Robert further:

Ironically, researchers believe a few of the people in the study may have acquired sinus infections as a result of having a Migraine. Lengthy Migraine attacks can lead to swollen nasal membranes and closed off sinus passages, creating the perfect environment for an infection, said Dr. Eross.

I had one neurologist (not a headache specialist) tell me my sinus problems are probably Migraine.  Without asking any further questions about my history, it sounds like he read the research, but I don’t think he was giving me useful information.  I don’t generally have those suspect sinus “headaches,” I have months of recurrent infection symptoms.

This is the essential chicken and egg dilemma.  Do my Migraines lead to sinus infections? Does the pressure and swelling of infection trigger Migraines?  Both look likely from my own history.  My internist is intrigued by the question but has no answer for me.  I’ve got my hopes pinned on the headache specialist appointment in June.   What difference does it make?   If I can work out a good preventive regimen for either ailment, I’d love to have it help both!

In the meantime, I try to live in the way that will best take care of both the sinuses and the Migraine brain, which for me involves avoiding dairy, keeping my supplements up (including magnesium and B for the head and C and zinc for the immune system), eating in a way that takes care of my gut (high fiber, not a lot of processed foods, using a pro-biotic supplement), keeping my nasal passages moist with a neti pot and saline spray, and using relaxation to keep the ole brain calm cool and collected (more or less).

Megan Oltman

Free my Brain from Migraine Pain, Free my Head from Sinus Dread?

Vitamin photo courtesy of DRB62/Daniel R. Blume

Gargoyle photo courtesy of ClatieK/Katie Claypoole

Tags: American Headache Society, migraine, sinus infection, Teri Robert
Posted in Communicating, Managing, Medicine | Comments (1)

Boy, that’s a Real Migraine!

February 28th, 2008

a. Europe’s $1.50 Headache Is Italy’s Migraine(Headline in Forbes.com today, article by Vidya Ram – the article is about the rising euro and its effect on Italian exporters.)

b.  SOUTHERN AFRICA: Integration and the migrant migraine (Headline from IRIN, posted by Reuters today – the article is about how the flow of Zimbabwean migrants to neighboring countries is hindering the goal of Southern African regional integration.)

c. Saturday – slept badly Friday night, migraine by afternoon, pain at level 3 on left, moderate nausea, picked up boys from movies, pain at level 8 on return, both sides now, extreme light sensitivity, took Imitrex 7 pm, lay down, room dark.  Can’t read or look at computer screen.  Vomiting on & off 3 hours, pain varied from 8 to 5,  went to sleep around 10.  Pain at a 3 on waking, tired, achy, depressed all day.

Okay, are you ready?  Which one is the real migraine?  You picked c, right?  Good job!  You get a gold star.  a and b are known as frustrations, hassles, problems or perhaps international crises.  They are not migraines.

Am I being too much of a stickler here?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  There’s a lot of real news about migraine in the news these days.  Partly thanks to the New York Times Migraine Blog, or maybe our chance for some recognition and understanding has finally come.  But most of us get annoyed by the trivialization of a very real and debilitating illness.

Interestingly, today the first 15 pages of results of a Google search on migraine are actually some kind of content about migraines. This was not so a few months ago, when I tried the same search and came up with many references like the two above, and one about a hockey team’s poor performance being a “migraine” for the team manager.

I am willing to ascribe most of this to ignorance, not evil intention.  I think it’s become a fashion to refer to a big hassle as a “migraine” instead of just a “headache.”  However, it does distract public attention from the fact that this is a disease.  A fact that most people still don’t know.

Is it okay to say “what a headache?”  If you’ve ever had a headache, you know what that means.  Most people have had a headache, and know that tension can lead to one.  So we call things that make us tense or upset “a headache.”  People also say “I just about had a stroke!” or “I just about had a heart attack!” I’ve been guilty of that myself.  After a stroke hit someone very near and dear to me, I didn’t feel like joking around about it any more.

This is in the category of being responsible for what comes out of our mouths.  We create our world through language.  We shape what is possible for ourselves and others.  You only have to listen to political double-speak to understand that.  Whoever gets to frame the issues tends to win the debate.

And so, maybe we can call a hassle a hassle and a crisis a crisis?  It seems like in our culture we always have to go one better, to make things more extreme.  If 10 years ago we called a hassle a headache, today we have to call it a migraine.  What will we call it 10 years from now?  A brain tumor?

– Megan Oltman
Somebody stop me before my head explodes!

cave waterfall courtesy of subflux; brain courtesy of Gaetan Lee

Tags: headache, migraine, news
Posted in Communicating, Current Affairs, Rant | Comments (7)

The Migraine Life – Waking up into it

February 19th, 2008

My eyes are not open yet. The alarm is calling with its insistent “nature sounds.” Supposed to be a spring breeze; it sounds like a blistering gale. I crack an eyelid, reach and press the snooze. Do I still have a migraine? Not sure yet but I know I don’t want to wake up.

Danny rolls over. “Needa lilmor sleep,” I mumble. Opening my mouth and enunciating would be a mistake. I catch the elusive tails of my dream – something about books and a cat. Drift into vagueness. Ten minutes passes like no time. More roaring wind. I reach to turn it off, eyes still closed. Danny gets up. I roll onto my back, checking. Crick in the neck. Roll the head gently on the neck. Body is okay. Little point of pain lodged over the left temple. Tiny. Like a bad little seed. “You should have taken the Imitrex last night,” I chide myself. But I don’t know. There is no absolute answer.

Sun is pouring in around the edges of the blinds. The covers are warm. My husband is cheerful. He is wishing me good morning. I am stretching gently, still unsure. If I move will the seed grow? I have slept enough, but should I be getting up? Should my responsibilities be pulling me into the day? Should my fear of the next migraine pull me back to bed? Where do good sense and balance lie?  I don’t know the answer. But I know I want to get up, I want to get to my good work, I want to live my life. I stand and start my stretches. Pain seed
does not go away, but neither does it grow. Still dormant. I move into my day.

Will I have to reset the migraine ticker? What will I write in my migraine diary? Maybe the pain will leave entirely. It may stay; it may or may not grow. I will get down on the floor and stretch. I will take all my supplements and medications. I will try very hard to eat right. I will meditate before work. I will plan my day and stick as best I can to my plan. I will take a walk, pray and let go of fear and anxiety. Ten minutes at a time, or an hour, or a day. Let me appreciate each moment without pain.

– Megan Oltman

“How are you feeling?” “Okay.” “Just okay?” “Okay is not bad, I’ll take it.”

Tags: managing life with migraine, migraine, post-drome
Posted in Musings | Comments (2)

I Got Them Old Migraine Blues Again, Mama!

January 25th, 2008

Yesterday the beast sank its claws into my brain,

Oh yes yesterday the beast sank its claws into my brain,

It may be awhile ‘fore I can shake ‘im loose again.

I got them old migraine blues again, mama!

I keep trying and trying to live a healthy life,

Yeah I just keep on trying to live a healthy life,

And I’ve got to keep on fighting, against the pain and strife,

Got them old Migraine blues again!

I’m trying to earn a living, just trying to make some bread,

Yes I got to earn a living, my kids do need that bread,

But it’s hard to keep on working with that beast perched on my head.

Is there light down the tunnel, this ain’t no funhouse ride!

Want that light down the tunnel, cause this ain’t no funhouse ride –

The light sure wants to blind me, but I’m tryin’ to let that slide.

Today I’m just post-droming and the beast has slunk away

Yes I think now I’m post-droming and the beast has slunk away

I’m trying to take it easy so he don’t come back today

Got them old migraine blues again, Mama!

If anybody wants to set this to music, let me know!  Post-drome, if you’re not familiar, is the part of the migraine after the headache is past.  For me it’s weak and shaky and my head’s a little tender.  Lately I can’t always tell if it’s post-drome or just a let-up in the pain.   But it’s a better way to start the day than in the midst of the head pain.

– Megan
Post-droming and hoping, to keep the beast away

claws image courtesy of delta407

Tags: blues, migraine, post-drome
Posted in Music, Silliness | Comments (2)

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)

These are the good old days

January 12th, 2008

Thanks to MJ for my topic today.  I’ve got the Carly Simon song “Anticipation” stuck in my head now, which is rough because I only remember half the tune and the lyrics.  But the final refrain says “Stay right here, ’cause these are the good old days, these are the good old days, these are the good old days…”  (Just you wait ’til  I figure out how to get an audio file in here and I’ll have you humming it too.)

Yesterday I wrote about Fridays…  getting nostalgic about a time when I used to go out on Friday nights.   It’s easy to get nostalgic when your head hurts – I can even get nostalgic for last Saturday, when I didn’t have a migraine or a sinus infection!  How about Thursday?  That was a good old day!

Truth is – I never went out every Friday.  Plenty of times of I was happy with a pizza and crappy tv.  PJs and slippers and a game of Scrabble.  We did eat out a lot on Fridays, because who wants to cook at the end of the work week?  But we lived in a big city, had disposable income, didn’t have kids yet, that made it easy.   And sometimes Friday was dinner and dancing – a movie – time out with friends – it did happen!

My Frigraine Friday wasn’t too bad.   Imitrex worked for awhile; I got some work done but didn’t overdo it; Danny made an easy comforting supper; we watched “Blithe Spirit” – an old Rex Harrison flick – and ate chocolate truffles.  The headache is still with me today, but mild.  (I refuse to call it a Saturgraine… that would be silly!)  I’m well enough today to write this.  This morning I made a dent in those Friday dishes.  I have plenty to be grateful for.  Look at this girl here – Kimi doesn’t long for the good old days!  A good belly-scratch makes it the best day ever!

So what’s yer point, Migraine-brain?  It’s hard to keep perspective when your head hurts.  It’s always dangerous to draw conclusions when you’re down.  Am I glad to be where I am today?  I’d rather the house was cleaner, the funds were bigger, my dress size was smaller, my migraines were fewer, shorter, weaker…  Would I pay money to be 25 again?  I would not.

Here’s to finding the joy in where you are, right now.  Wherever that is.

– Megan
Wickity-Whack but still ticking

pizza image courtesy of wEnDaLicious/wEnDy

Tags: anticipation, Carly Simon, imitrex, living in the moment, managing life with migraine, migraine, nostalgia
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