Sunday, July 6, 2008

Migraines

My Introduction to Death and Destruction

For those of you lucky enough to not get migraines, feel blessed.

So right now I feel like bitching about migraines in a blog, mainly because I have one right now and it feels like the stomach flu and I'm ready to rip out my entire digestive system.

How Can You Tell I'm Getting a Migraine?

Alright, so I know that migraines can be different for each and every person, but this is about me. So that all of you know, I get migraines. How can you tell when I have a migraine?

1. I look like crap and like I'm about to fall asleep

2. I tell you I'm nauseous.

3. I have a hard time functioning on a most basic level

4. I am easily aggitated.

5. I am highly sensitive to light and sound

Causes of My Migraines

Okay, so they don't always happen at the same time, but usually they do. Now, I don't know about other people, but let me tell you what gives me migraines.

1. Not enough sleep.

2. Not enough food.

3. Working too long.

4. Not taking enough time for me to do what I need to do in order for basic survival and human function.

5. Sleeping on the right side of my body.

Solutions?

Okay, so if I get these migraines all the time then you would think that I would have developed a means of getting rid of them. Alright, so I do to some extent, but there's only so much I can do.

1. Take a pill (Ibuprofen, Aspirin, Tylenol, etc (damn I can't spell med names))

Alright, here's the problem with this one. Unless I take a pill right after the very first sign of a headache, and I take about 5 pills in one go, it doesn't work. I hate taking pills and I feel that my body will be stronger if I don't rely on them. Because this only works if I take it when the headache is small, I'd be taking pills all the time. Also, I have to take 5 pills at one time, and to do that for every headache would just be stupid. So, I rarely use this.

2. Go to sleep.

If I can tell that this headache is starting to develop into a migraine, I try to go to sleep if at all possible. The problem is that I usually don't have the freedom to go to sleep around the time that I would need to in order to effectively put an end to the growing migraine. Usually I'm out doing stuff (dancing, school, hanging out with friends, etc). Going to sleep is always great, it helps the migraine go away. After I go to sleep I wake up feeling instantly better. The only thing is, after a certain point, it doesn't matter how much I need to go to sleep, other stuff needs to happen before I can.
Another problem is if the migraine was caused from sleep. If I sleep on the right side of my body, it drains my system of food. My stomach needs food in it at night and without it, I get sick. That's what this migraine is from, sleeping on the wrong side of my body. Now I have puked three times and it's three in the morning. If I was sleeping, I wake up in the middle of the night and I have to throw up before I can go back to sleep but I still have to eat something before I do (see below for predicament toward eating).

3. Eat something.

Seeing as how this is one of the key factors to me getting a migraine, it would make sense that it would also be a way to help get rid of one. However the thing with eating is that it only helps with the nausea. If I am getting a migraine due to lack of food, it works. Still, I'm not usually lucky enough for this. My migraines are usually a cause of lack of food AND sleep. If I'm really tired, I have to consume ridiculous amounts of food to keep going, and usually it's best to just go to sleep. So eating something is not really that effective in helping with a migraine.

4. Tough it out.

I'm not usually lucky enough to get it to stop soon enough. What happens? As much as I would love to go to sleep or eat something or both, I can't. Why? Because after a certain point, my body pretty much goes into survival mode. I get painfully nauseous and over-tired and there's nothing I can do about it. I have a painful headache, I feel like death itself, and I would just love to put an end to it somehow just to end the misery.
When I have to tough it out, I usually have a killer headache, am really tired (usually the cause of the headache), feel like I'm starving, and yet I feel like all my guts are about to come gushing out of my mouth because I feel so sick (thus all the signs from above).
What ends of being the case if I'm "toughing it out" is that I have to throw up or else I can't function.

5. Make myself throw up.

This is a last resort, yet, it's been increasing in the frequency I've needed to use it. I swear, I'm going to have some serious issues latter on in life with my trachea if this keeps up. Right now I've puked three times in the past hour from this f-ing migraine and I can't get the burn out of my that. Oi. It doesn't help that some vomit got stuck in my nose so now that burns, too, and smells disgusting.
Anyway, back to throwing up. So usually, after this, I feel relieved and I can go to sleep and in the morning I feel so much better.
Problem with this? It's like bulimia, because I have to make myself throw up. It wouldn't be a problem except that I've been getting migraines more and more often where this is what it comes to. Also, on rare occasions I get times like tonight where I throw up multiple times. It sucks, because in these times, making yourself puke up everything doesn't work once, it has to happen three+ times to have any effect.
Another bad side effect: if the cause of the migraine was based around a lack of food, think of how throwing up affects your stomach? Yeah, it empties it of everything. If I needed food, I needed to hang on to everything in there. Now my stomach has even less food than before, but hey, at least I'm feeling better.

The After-Effect

Okay, so let's say that it gets to the end, where I puke. What next? Well, here's how it goes. Now begins a careful balancing act. When you puke, you know that if you eat or drink anything, you will again. Same thing for me. Now if my migraine is focused around hunger and a lack of food, throwing up can start it all over again if I don't get food into my system A.S.A.P. So what do you do? You balance eating with not eating. Right after I throw up, there's a period of time where if I eat, I will throw up again, however if I don't eat, I will have to throw up again later because the entire migraine problem will have started all over. Also, if I need sleep (which usually happens along with hunger) it becomes a question of:

1. When do you eat?

2. How much do you eat?

3. What do you eat?

4. Do you drink anything?

5. How fast do you eat?

6. How soon after eating can you go to sleep and be okay when you wake up?

The biggest issues with migraines is that if you don't deal with it soon enough the end solution (sleep) will only make it work if you try it too early. So now you juggle the fact that you're sick, hungry, and tired and try to make it so that you don't die in the process. I swear, it's an art form keeping myself alive. It's horrible. And if you fuck it up in the process you get to start all over and spend another few hours doing it all over. It sucks.

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Alright, well, my apologies for my rant. If this thoroughly disgusted you, I'm sorry. Thanks for reading, though. Seeing as how I get migraines a lot, maybe this will help you get what I go through and why it sucks so much and how, despite how shitty I look on the outside, I always feel about a hundred times worse on the inside. Despite how short this sounded (lol, I don't know if it sounded short or not), the truth is, migraines can start for me mid-afternoon and by the time I'm able to go to sleep it's about 8 or 9 hours after I needed to. I have even had a migraine that started at about 4 in the afternoon and I wasn't able to throw up and go to sleep until about 6 the next morning. Migraines suck really bad, and if you don't get them, feel blessed.

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