Breakthrough Migraine and an Interesting Development

Well, I had my first real migraine in quite a while last night. It started coming on around 7:00 in the evening as I was putting Ellie to bed. It had been so long since I had a real one that I made a rookie mistake and ignored it completely. My wonderful Maxalt stayed locked in their special plastic hip flask, and my Midrin stayed snug in my secret keychain "Magnum" pill holder.

The headache stayed at a Richter one throughout the evening and I went to sleep with it. Rookie mistake number two. There's no way I can sleep off a migraine without meds. Never have been able to, never will be able to. At 1:30 AM, I awakened from one of those wonderful dreams-- one of the ones where the pain actually invades the dream itself. It makes me wonder if the weird relationship between serotonin, vasodilation/vasoconstriction, et al makes it possible for migraine pain to transcend the dream state-- hmmm. Anyway, the pain invaded the dream, and woke me up. A quick trip to the bathroom to find my Maxalt, a burst of crappy peppermint taste on the tongue, and a trip back to bed. Maxalt saved the day-- for me at least. For my wife, I guess it was a different story. . .

Maxalt makes me a bit "loopy," particularly when I take it and sleep. It also makes me prone to snore. LOUDLY. So my wife got the brunt of the Maxalt effect last night. I got the elbows in the ribs and the "Honey, roll over" several times as well.

An Interesting Development

I have been approached by a migraine portal to do a biweekly blog as an "expert patient." I am currently reviewing the terms and conditions, but they look favorable, and I see it as an opportunity to contribute to the migraine community in a forum that can reach more people than Xinc's Domain alone. I'll still contribute here, as I do today-- the stuff over at the other portal will be more targeted and themed items. Once the deal is sealed I will be at liberty to provide more details. I'm really excited about this opportunity!

Last, but not Least

I think I know the cause of the breakthrough migraine last night. My beautiful wife came down with a case of pneumonia this week, which means that I've been taking on Mr. Mom duty with my daughter. I have a much greater appreciation for the amount of work that my wife does, now, that's for sure!

Anyway, I took much of the week off of work to help take care of the baby-- up until Friday, that is. We had a baby sitter come in on Friday, and I finally made it in to work. Let me tell you: never has work felt more like a vacation. Those eight hours went by so quickly I found myself begging the clock not to strike five.

What I figure happened was that during the week, taking care of Ellie and my wife, I was working in "stress mode," which means that I was probably in a vasoconstrictive mode. Once Friday hit, and I was able to actually relax for a few hours at work, my blood vessels dilated and started irritating the trigeminal nerve. Voila: migraine.

Hopefully I'm getting back to a stasis mode again.

Until next time: L'chaim.