Category Archives: Migraine

Chronic pain, Do not taunt happy fun ball, Migraine, Mygraine

Not the ride I was looking for…

2 Comments

The day began as they often do, with a migraine and a moan.  Today I grabbed my D.H.E. injection and headed downstairs to shoot away the pain and get started with my morning so I could walk into work and enjoy the sunshine.

By 11:30 it became clear walking wasn’t going to happen.  The headache was gone but I was feeling weak and shaky from the shot.  Still, headache gone, time to go to work.  Dad dropped me off at noon and I said hello to the office for the first time in several days.

Then about half an hour later I began to experience chest pains.

Not again, I thought.

You see last week I missed work because I spent Monday in the E.R. with chest pains which started 12 hours after taking my D.H.E.

Calmly I wrote down the time they started and when I took the medication and began trying to work again.  Then I began to feel a sensation of pain move down my left arm and into my hand, and my arm went numb.  I marked the time and the sensation and called my doctor.  No answer.  I went back to work.  About fifteen minutes later I started feeling hot and clammy and my hands began to perspire.  Shit.  I called my doctor, marked the time, made notes.  No answer.  I went back to work.  A bit later I began to feel nauseated.  I called my mother.

Which is how I ended up in the back of an ambulance on my way to the ER for the second time in one week.  My mother wisely suggested, and then ordered me to call 911 for an ambulance.  I called and they were there fast.  I was impressed.  I barely had time to alert my co-workers to the fact that I would be leaving for the day, much less that four paramedics and two EMT’s were about to swarm the building and cart me off on a gurney.

I was rather embarrassed, honestly.  I prefer my illness to be more private than that.

Once in the ambulance I got aspirin and Nitro, and off we went to St. Joe’s for the tender mercies of the day staff.  They were wonderful.  They took every possible test and precaution and sent me home with the admonishment to never again take D.H.E.

Apparently it caused vascular spasms in me, resulting in decreased blood flow to my heart that was painful, but not damaging in the same way a heart attack was.  However, there were clear that there was no good to be had in continuing to take it.  I have to agree as the triponin test I took last week at the E.R. was 0.00 and this week’s was 0.015, it seems there is a slight increase in enzymes associated with heart attack.  I want to stop this ride while my numbers are in the “still negative” for heart attack range instead of waiting to see if I can raise them any further.

So tonight it’s cookies, tea, and sleep.  And OK, a little weep.  After years of not finding a solution to my migraines I am upset that the one drug that seemed the most promising tried to kill me in other ways.  I was so hopeful for this one.  (Damn homicidal medications!)

Healing, health, Just me, Migraine, Trigeminal neuralgia

Move ’em on, head ’em up, Head ’em up, move ’em out

1 Comment

This whole “lead a normal life” regimen is really hard.  So far I am mid-transition with my medication which means I am getting the sharp face punches more frequently.  The good news is they last a very short time and I am learning to breathe through them.

Still, the only way I can keep on with the normalcy prescription is to just keep moving.  The first day I cleaned my entire living space from head to toe, reorganized my files and office, cleaned my son’s space, washed and folded laundry, waked to campus, taught class, then hung out with the kids, doing homework and such until bedtime.  Ten o’clock, my chosen bedtime, has never been so happily greeted.

The second day I spent in search of the icky cat pee smell and spent two hours scrubbing hardened cat resin off of various parts of the house where my twelve year old had failed to sweep up spilled litter when changing the catboxes.  Afterward I mopped assiduously. For exercise I spent 45 minutes on the exercise bike. Finally, I worked for a few hours, cooked dinner and did dishes before helping the kids with schoolwork, baths, and bedtime.

By the time the third day rolled around I had the hardest time getting moving.  Every step seemed a struggle and every action a burden.  All I wanted to do was lie in bed and watch t.v. or sleep.  Instead, I got up.  I got the kids ready for school, made myself breakfast, and did thirty minutes on the exercise bike.  I worked, applied for jobs, reviewed my current cases and did laundry.  After school I took Marlena to the doctor for a knee injury at school and once home ran errands for her and made sure she was comfortable.  When she and Ollie left with their father I did rest some.

I keep thinking that if I just keep busy I will get used to it again.  I used to have tons of energy and was able to handle dozens of complicated things every day while still managing to be a good parent.  I even did this with migraines.  Heck, I’ve had ’em since I was 12, so learning to cope with them was  a necessity.  I succeeded through law school with more than 16 headache days a month and a small child.

Still, despite the prescription to just keep moving, I can feel the tiredness pouring from my body.  It’s inclination to lie down and sleep is powerful, fed in part by the three or four different medications I am on that cause drowsiness.  At this point, it’s sheer will, stubborness, and the love of those around me that keeps me going on this new lifestyle change.

health, Migraine

Dude, why’d you have to kick me in the face?

21 Comments

There is a new door in my own personal heath game of Let’s Make A Deal!  While Door Number One held migraines behind it, and Door Number Two had cluster headaches lurking, this week’s visitor behind Door Number Three is Trigeminal Neuralgia. (Which I originally remembered as Tribal Gemini Neurosis, a mnemonic device I used simply so I could remember enough to find it on the Googles later.)

So, TGN is my new potential havoc wrecking friend, like the frat boy you hate in college movies because he is always smashing things up or annihilating your chances with the sensitive hot cheerleader types.  It turns out that TGN manifests a lot like Bruce Lee kicking you in the face.  It can be set off by wind blowing on your cheek, turning over to sleep on your favorite side at night, and seemingly anything else under the sun.

I will be reading, walking, shopping, sitting, doing whatever and then BLAMMO! Bruce mothercussing Lee has come out of nowhere and slammed his well trained foot into my tragic left cheek bone.  I won’t lie, this makes me cry.  Usually I try to laugh pain off, you know, make jokes about gnomes cutting my guts open with teeny little knives but there is no time for joke making when Bruce Lee kicks you in the face.  When Bruce Lee kicks you in the face, you cry.  Unless you are a cyborg.  Then you just disintegrate him with your violent red laser beam eyes.

So what is TGN? Well if you are really interested you can take a look at this fascinating interactive 3-D map of a human brain.   If you click on number 12 it will cause what appears to be an alpine brain crampon light up, I think it’s supposed to be a nerve, but it looks more like a glow in the dark hiking crampon to me. It will then switch positions to show you it is actually some sort of space aged light gun, like Han Solo would have carried. (Ok, brain stem and nerve, but don’t tell me you can’t see the laser gun.)  Then, once you are done ogling the amazing spaced age brain weaponry, you can navigate around the rest of the site to learn that “Trigeminal Neuralgia is universally acknowledged as one the most painful afflictions known to adults and affects thousands of Americans each year.”  So far, after spending half an hour on the website, that is all I have learned  about TGN.

If you get past the panic inducing fact that apparently you may have just won the pain lottery you can read on to discover that the guy behind this website has resolved it in 5000 patients (It doesn’t mention how many patients he has had, so I don’t know what that means from a chances regarding my recovery standpoint) and that he does so by endoscopic vascular decompression.

…  That sounds complicated and wordy? I wonder what he means?…

Apparently the treatment for TGN is to make a small dime sized whole behind the ear, then a 2.7-millimeter endoscope is inserted into the head.  The cranial nerves and vessels are identified and all things going wrong with it are repaired, slowly without butchering the brain.  The dura is closed, the bone piece is repositioned and the 3-centimeter incision is re-approximated.  In fact, if you want to see the animations or the videos, go ahead!  I know they had me screaming silently inside my pounding head for a while.

Now, if only one of the several docs I am trying to work with would let me know I definitely don’t need to have my head opened in any way because I have something else entirely, that would be great.  Until then, I will be over in this corner here, holding my knees, rocking back and forth, and eating too many M&M’s.