Spinach Hangover: My Life Among the Migraines

It's 6 AM. I've been up since at least 3 AM. I'm sitting in the lobby of a Holiday Inn. A pinched nerve woke me up, made me toss and turn, and finally made me give up on sleep. But with my husband having a busy day ahead, I chose not to wake him with the glare from my laptop and the tapping of laptop keys. The pain in my hip made me breathe in shallow gasps as I hobbled down the hall from my room to the elevator. The trip down from the 3rd floor to the 1st took eons. Then another painful hobble down the hall to the lobby, gripping the wall and hyperventilating. I honestly thought about just stopping and lying down on the floor, at least 3 times. The only thing that stopped me was not having the energy to deal with hotel staff if anyone saw me. By the time I crumpled onto a couch in the lobby, I had to gulp hard to keep from puking. What does a pinched nerve have to do with migraines? It's a ripple effect. The last time a migraine laid me up on the couch for a week,

The inside of an MRI sounds like heartfelt discussion between a dial-up modem and an early 1980's videogame. Luckily I'm not claustrophobic, so I don't mind either the enclosing aperture or the layers of swaddling they use to keep me in place. I like the bolster under my legs, the warm blanket, the neon green earplugs, and even the pads they stick on either side of my head to keep it from moving. I like feeling the odd sounds ricocheting in my skull. Most of all, I like the fact that this MRI is voluntary. I signed up to do it as part of a research study on migraines. The man who shepherded me through the procedure was warm and down-to-earth. He said that when he was a young boy, his mother used to lecture him and his brother, telling them that "thoughts have energy." He used to roll his eyes. Now, though, he's looking at the energy of my thoughts, in a way. They did several scans of my head, each between 5 to 11 minutes long. For most of them, they told m

I resisted starting this blog for a long time. I kept thinking that my life wasn't all about migraines. Surely next month I'd have my treatment regimen mastered, and then I could focus on the things that really matter to me. But I've been thinking that for at least the last 10 years.