Ow

[spqrblues]

Halfway through the 200-mile commute this evening,I looked down to check the speedometer, and it wasn't there.



There was only a jagged sparkly line marking the edges of a nothingness, growing longer, threatening to turn my entire field of vision into a blind spot. There's nothing quite like a migraine at 70 mph.



Apparently I made it back in one piece. But I can feel the worse part of the migraine -- the nausea and claw-your-brain-out pain -- about to begin. I go lie in the dark now.

Comments

[pnew8.livejournal.com]

*hug*

My commute isn't as far as yours and it's sometimes along county roads. Not that long ago, I'm looking at my speedometer and I see, not nothing, but a darkness to the side, a dark spot with the haze of a rainbow. I look again. It's larger. "Oh, shit, ohshit ohshit ohshit." And I start looking for enough room on the side of the road to pull over and take my pill. Because I carry my pills with me everywhere, all the time. There isn't any place to pull over. I'm losing vision completely in one eye. I dial home and whine 'help' to the husband. I call work and tell them I won't be making it in for the shift. I do a U turn and head for the little country cemetery that is a few miles back. It has room to pull the car off the road. I park and with shaking hands pop the pill and pray that it was soon enough to avoid the worst pain. Parts of my body, my hands, my face, are numb and the throb inside my head begins. Twenty minutes later, my hubby arrives and drives me home. My rescuer. At home, more pills and straight to been bed.

I hate migraines. I don't know how you did it. I really don't.

*hug* Hope its all better now.

And yet I blogged. I'm crazy.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for your rescuer! Plus, you did the smart thing -- found a place to pull off the road and called for help. How scary to be in the middle of nowhere when one hit, though. I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to keep going. I could pretend I was being determined and strong, but I suppose I wasn't thinking clearly. Luckily, this wasn't one of the Truly Bad migraines. Four or five hours later, I feel beaten up, but I'm back in front of the laptop, teasing fate. (For a little while. Bedtime for me.)

It's strange, but for some reason the progression of my migraines has changed. It used to be: weird jaggged pulsating sparklies, then a few minutes leeway (long enough for "ohshit ohshit ohshit") before I'd be screeching in a corner. Lately, though, the visual weirdness, the whole-body uneasiness, might start a full hour before the pain sets in. There were no mixed-up senses (smelling sounds, hearing colours), so I figured I had a little extra time. I pulled off at a gas station and got a bottle of cold juice, debated whether or not to check into a hotel, debated phoning a friend 300 miles away because that was the only phone number I could summon up (last night I'd memorised the cell phone number off an answering machine message and apparently it stuck). Because I'm some sort of masochist, I decided to drive on. I set the cruise control and drove holding the bottle of fruit juce against various parts of my head in the delusion that I'd trick my head, and tried something vaguely akin to breathing exercises. Spilled fruit juice on my shoulder. Whimpered periodically. Cursed the other cars for their evilness in being on my road.

By the time I reached home, no sparklies, just vaguely missing patches of vision and queasiness and that little knife tapping you in the head saying "This is what's about to come; get ready." I was stumbling around in the semi-dark of the bedroom when a bird flapped by (for three flappings-by I wondered whether I was hallucinating). There was time to toss a sheet over the bird and fire off a couple of lj posts to let anyone looking for me know what's become of me. Go figure: I’m in pain and think I’ll be incommunicado, so I blog :-P

So... not the best decision to keep driving, I suppose, since it was prompted mostly by my discomfort at being in a strange town. Thinking back over it, I drove most of it in a complete mental fog. Yoicks. Yes, your decision was smarter!

But I’ll take the hug :-)

Re: And yet I blogged. I'm crazy.

[pnew8.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you made it home, despite the bird!

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

Ow!

Hope you feel better soon!

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Ow.

Much better now. Feeling pummelled, but philosophical.

Doing long-drawn-out analyses of my need to blog and rescue birdies when slivers of my brain are about to be sliced out (see reply above).

Honestly, it wasn't too bad this time. But I'm exhausted....