AfflictionAteHer

My headache returned last night.  I took 4 Extra-Strength Tylenol, but it still hurt.  I think because i got on my computer.  The screen — so bright, the background, the definition and the border around each letter unbearable to look at — hurt my eyes, so I think that’s what brought it back.  It was the trying to focus on small things.  I tried adjusting the intensity and colors of the display but it didn’t help.

For most of yesterday my legs felt wobbly.  They weren’t actually wobbly — they just felt weak.

this all reminds me so much of my childhood.  The just plain old not feeling good, physically, most days.  I am so tired of it.  It interferes with my life so much.  Allergies.  Asthma.  Fatigue.  Nausea.  These damn headaches, and the damn pounding heart.

But they aren’t from some insidious tumor or disease.  They are simply afflictions, side effects of extreme stress.  I feel ashamed of my stress response.  I would probably feel tremendously better if I would force myself to eat better, go to sleep earlier, drink less Diet Coke, cut way back on sugar, and get a little bit of exercise.  My stress level would probably decrease, too.

It’s no wonder I so often wish my mother lived with us when I’m going through this kind of thing.  The healthy meals.  The sympathy.  The empathy.  The concern — even the calling me on the carpet about lifestyle factors from my diet to not finding a better doctor.

Of course, this will probably all change overnight.  One week of well-balanced dinners.  Or a few long walks.  Something will shift and my symptoms might not disappear but they will at least fade in to the background of my life.

I was thinking, last night, that my lifestyle choices are self-destructive.  I mean that quite literally.  It’s almost as if I am trying to speed up, to rush to, my own death:  to a heart attack, or a stroke, or cancer.  Almost as if my frustration with doctors has less to do with their follow-up than it does with not finding some potentially deadly malady.  I used to hear that all the time when I was a kid, after we moved back to Canyon, and all through my twenties.  That I was self-destructive.  It was hugely irritating to me because I was trying so hard not to be.  What other people thought of as self-destructive lifestyle choices I thought of as crucial ballast.  Things I did when feelings became overwhelming and threatened to drown me — mostly impulsiveness and insecurity and paranoia.  And yet… there were times when I simply let everything fall apart, and even helped it along, our of a kind of deep fatigue and a desire to simply be taken care of.  And there were solitary hours spent trying to think my way to death, which I must have thought of, on some instinctual level, and the ultimate do-over.

Yesterday I wondered — if I don’t start feeling better, and if I can’t find another job because I am older and uncertified, will I become suicidal again?  Or are my diet and smoking and lack of sleep and exercise already a kind of suicide designed to lead me to an early death that at least leaves my family with some insurance money? I feel an intense pull in that direction, at one extreme, and deep shame and a desire to pull myself out of it at the other.  And this job is like a thumb tack, holding this story in place.

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Migraine city, man.  I got hit full-force with one yesterday afternoon, late.  I’d been fighting a headache all day and then, suddenly, wham! auras everywhere.

When I get these ocular migraines a headache is not always riding along, but when it does it can be severe.  Always on the left side, throbbing, sharp and intense pain.  Ocular migraines are weird when they happen without a headache — the visual disturbance can make it impossible to read, or even to look at anything up close — to focus in.  But at least there’s no headache when that happens.  I may not be able to work (or drive) for an hour or two once they start, but they rarely wipe me out.  Add in the headache, though, and I can end up laying face-first in a dark room attempting to put pressure on the part of my head that’s throbbing.  Lucky for me, the pain does respond to over the counter pain relievers, at least to some degree.  These hang around for days and days, and the ocular symptom can be triggered pretty easily.

The fatigue and shakiness I felt all day the day before – the lightheadedness, too, and the stiff neck a few days before — may have been signs that a migraine was on the way.  I’ve been taking 2 and then 3 and then 4 Extra-Strength Tylenol a couple of times a day for the past several days to try to keep the headache at bay, but it didn’t do much good yesterday.

I jumped on the Internet and read the Wikipedia article on migraines late last night, once I could stand to look at my computer screen again.  What I read bothered me.  Yet another brain-related illness that’s associated with mood swings, changes in perception and behavior, and asthma.  Yet another brain-related illness that ups the chance for a stroke (but a huge percentage) or heart attack.  Yet another brain related illness that science hasn’t quite pinned down, and that may or may not respond to any number of different mediations or supplements.  All my medical issues seem to be centered in my brain, and none of them are well understood or have specific medications that always provide symptom relief or have any cure.  All of them are heavily influenced by stress.  Most of them are exacerbated by smoking.

I was doing so well right before I went back to work.  The stress was under control.  I was drinking less Diet Coke.  My diet was a lot better.  I was getting plenty of sleep, and even some exercise.  And then this darn job.  This just overpoweringly stressful job.

Of course, these migraines started when I was 8 or 9, and back then I used to get them in my abdomen, too.  I never had a chance.

So here it is, 4:30 in the afternoon, and I’m home because I took another sick day.  I rolled myself up in to a ball in the bed until around 10:30, then just layed there with a washcloth on my neck and a pillow over my head until noon.

It was wonderful.

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