Yesterday, I woke up with a migraine. I admit that now.
But yesterday I was in denial. Oh, it’s just a headache, perhaps I needed more sleep (but I had 6 1/2 hours), or drink more water, or my blood sugar was low. I will just drink some water, take two Excedrin, and plow through. I still will research blog promotion, go out to lunch with my familiy, clean up the backyard, play with Gracie, talk to my husband about his work, pick up the dry cleaning, help my husband pick out paint colors for his office, and design my new marketing plan.
But then reality caught up with me. After taking the family to Outback Steakhouse, and eating a steak with Gracie is climbing all over me while trying to keep Gracie from throwing a plate of mac and cheese across the room or her grabbing a serrated knife and waiving it around, I came home and realized that My Head Hurt.
By then, another dose of Excedrin and a cooling patch to the forehead were too late — I had a migraine. Which means, that I will Have a Migraine for 2-4 days.
I don’t have time for this! I have Work to Do, Baby to Care, Husband to Talk, House to Tidy, Blog to Write, Business to Run.
Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps the reason I have migraines is my body’s mechanism to force me to Slow Down. Because, I definitely must slow down when I have a migraine. Obvously not too much though, because I am still typing a blog entry as we speak – but that may just be because I have a fairly high tolerance for pain.
When I decided for forego pain medication for the birth of my daughter, one of my reasons was because of my tolerance of my migraines (typically 4-6 days per month, 2 days with pain enough to disable). I would rather go through those 5 hours of labor each month than have 6 days of migraines. First, at the end of labor you get a baby (not that I want a baby each month, but you get the idea). Migraines have No Reason. Second, labor has a beginning and an end. Five hours is really not that long to deal with discomfort. Four days of a migraine is a long time. Not only do I Not Have Time for it, it really sucks!
According to the World Health Organization, migraines are a disabling illness. “WHO ranks Migraine as one of the top twenty causes of years of healthy life lost to disability.” National Migraine Association. And, all those migraine medications don’t work — for me they just give me weird side effects (like anxiety) and only take the edge off the pain (and do nothing for my nausea, tolerance for light, sound or smells).
For now I will just medicate myself with some chocolate donuts. One good side effect of migraines — I feel justified in eating anything I want.
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I'm Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, a writer, teacher, and coach.