At 8pm this evening I woke up after a 2 and a half hour nap exhausted and desperate to go to the bathroom but thankfully without the all consuming headache that had plagued me as I crawled onto my bed and buried myself in its mountain of pillows.
It was only a head ache, so in some ways I am grateful, to who I cant really say. I have had worse, much worse in recent months. Migraines so severe I cant sleep, that see me curled up in a fetal position on the couch clutching at my head to relieve the pressure and trying not to move or hunched over the toilet bowl with fingers down my throat in a desperate attempt to relieve the nausea or naked, crying pitiful tears of resignation in the shower surrounded by remnants of my own vomit because I dont have the energy or motivation to move and at least the crying creates a different sort of pressure if only temporarily.
Mum and I semi joke that at these times if I were admitted to an emergency room I would appear to be some sort of drug addict.
Eventually with some sort of intervention the symptoms recede enough to permit an escape to sleep. The next morning however, while the severe symptoms are gone what remains is a fog of lethargy and light headed ness that makes me personally not feel safe enough to drive and generally requires another afternoon nap. I generally don't feel well again for about 36 hours after the migraine begins.
This time though it was only a headache. You know how I can tell? I took some nurofen and went to sleep and a) actually got to sleep and b) when I woke up it was gone. So even though part of me feels like that was a waste of a perfectly beautiful afternoon it was by comparison quite a productive one.
I write this not to gross anyone out but to remind myself what's going on.
The migraines started about 6 months ago when I decided to go back on a form of hormonal contraception that I had used without issue before. At the time (and even now) this decision was made not for reasons of birth control but because I had noticed that if at time approximately consistent with the third week of my menstrual cycle I participated in any form of strenuous cardiovascular exercise (mostly running or bike riding) I would develop these strange cramp like symptoms that came in waves, feel really hot and sick and most times be forced to discontinue whatever I was doing and wait for it to pass. Only sometimes this would take longer than others and my incapacitation during these times made me feel unsafe (especially as to my mothers and aunts chagrin I have a habit of going running in the middle of the night). Because of the timing we (being my medical team of mum + impartial GP + myself) suspected it might be caused by hormonal progesterone fluctuations and decided to test this theory using hormonal contraception.
Since then the original symptoms have stopped (so it worked!) and/but I can pretty much calculate to the day when I am going to be fighting back some sort of mind altering pain. So far I've had times when I needed nausia injections to stop the vomiting. I've tried migraine medication but for the most part tablets don't seem to work because my stomach is the first organ to shut down and I have yet to have a need to try the nasal spray; I've been having physiotherapy on my neck in the hope that releasing the pressure there will reduce the frequency and severity of the pain (which seems to be doing a lot of good) and I have ehem - other - types of medication not absorbed through the stomach as a fall back option for the nausia.
At this point I would go out on a limb and say that the solution has/is causing more problems than the original presenting issue not to mention the financial cost involved in not only the contraception but also all of the additional medications involved in suppressing the migrane side effects (I tell you they are not cheap!) and I would dump it in a second except that - although not necessary at the moment - hormonal contraception is so significantly more effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies than any other barrier type methods of contraception... And I really, if I can help it, don't want to be faced with an unplanned pregnancy (although I'll let you know that there are times when my head is screaming at me when the balance of my decision starts tipping in the other direction). And so considering my current life stage, now seems as good a time as any - possibly the best time to sort this stuff out.
So I am working with my understandably frustrated GP who when presented with the problem has to hear me say things like "well I don't feel comfortable trying implanon because I pole dance and so a lot of pressure gets out on my arm in the area it would be implanted and I'm not sure what sort of damage that little piece of plastic could do" and "well see my problem with the pill is that I know myself and I am terrible at remembering to do things ate the same time every day, even with reminders in my phone" and "the I fear what would happen if I had an adverse effect to the injection" (which admittedly she agreed with) and my GP herself doesn't want to put an IUD in someone like myself who hasn't had kids. So that leaves... Well as I said, we are working on that.
My point being, that today I only had a headache :D
Much love,
D.
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