My daughter has suffered from
migraines for the past four years. It started out every once in a while, but then they came closer and closer together.
A pattern started to emerge. 6 months apart, 4 months apart, 2 months apart.
She could not function for 24 hours. Her brothers
looking at her funny hurt her head and made her want to be sick. A car driving on the street, the light from her clock radio. She would
hide in her room, door closed, shades down,
blankets OVER shades, and
duck under her covers with a pillow over her head. She knew when they were coming too. It would tense her up even more.
She'd see spots floating before her eyes about an hour before.
It took us two years to figure out the cause of this nightmareish pain for her. We brought her to the doctor when she was 10. What's going on? We tried to find a trigger, nothing was in common. Then the pattern emerged. That along with her developing body. Her migraines were hormonally induced.
"She's becoming a woman. She will probably have these monthly. BUT now we know, we can stop most of them from incapacitating her."
That doctor was a blessing. "Stop them before they start or she'll have to ride it out." Now when she feels them coming on (sees the spots), she takes lots of Motrin, goes to lay down in a dark quiet room for a half hour, and that seems to work. We keep a stock at school for her in case one hits there. She has control now to stop it from starting.
Last night I had a migraine. I didn't recognize the spirally specks floating before my eyes for I had not seen them before. They didn't connect to anything. I've had headaches before but never such as this. I've never really understood the pain she felt when she had them so often. How it could be so bad it would make her ill. I never really understood how the little things made it worse. I never understood until last night, that is, when I couldn't get comfortable, I couldn't go off to a darkened room by myself, I wanted to rip the engine right out of the truck that was running next to our trailer for a half hour straight. I wanted to hurl a rock at every streetlight.
I found myself laying on the concrete slab outside of our trailer to get away from the light of kids doing homework, the sound of the TV, the sound of SO's fingers tapping on the computer keys, in the only spot where the street light didn't touch, a pillow over my head...and even there, the trailer park kids coming up to me,,,,"Hey, is A around?"...I bit my tongue so I would not growl. What I needed and couldn't have was my own private soundproof room with the door locked and a big comfortable bed. I do not know how she made it through without crying. Tears streamed out of my eye, the pain was so great.
SO took pity on me when he realized how bad it was. Daughter sat and stroked my head for a little, full of sympathy, cause she knew. SO kicked the kids out at 7:00 pm to play, turned off all the lights, every last thing that gave off any light whatsoever, shut all the windows, closed all the shades, and let me go to sleep under a ton of blankets and pillows to block out all sensory information from the world, (seeing as I couldn't blow up that dratted highway next to our park).
Twelve hours sleep did wonders. I understand now what my child went through.
go ahead,
see if you can find a dead link
'tis more than a daylog,
an exercise in the fine art of hardlinking