Migraine Attack

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk trying to get some work done before the end of the week when it felt like someone struck me across the back of the head. I was talking to one of my teacher friends at the time, so luckily I wasn't alone, but it was horrible.

Almost immediately, the Topamax kicked in and so instead of screaming in pain, I was floating outside my body. I don't know which is worse. As always with my headaches, I lost words and started sounding like a three-year old trying to string sentences together. All light became my enemy and my room was way too hot. All I wanted to do was lie down on the tile floor and die.

I managed to get to the drawer where I keep my Maxalt and take one of them, and even though I hate the way they taste and the completely disconnected way I feel after I have to take one, I will say this for them: if I get to them fast enough, they work. I stopped feeling as if the back of my head was being pounded out and started just feeling numb.

I couldn't drive at all, so I was basically trapped at school. Even as impaired as I was, I aware that I shouldn't try to drive. I've done it before, mind you, but as bad as that was yesterday, I couldn't have made sense of the traffic around me or of the basic machinery of running the vehicle. I hate that. I hate the stupification of the headaches. They make me so dependent on others, something I almost never am, something I loathe being.

I called my mother and fortunately she was still in town even though she gets off work earlier than I do. She was able to come and get me, and so I toddled downstairs from my classroom to the waiting minivan with all my stuff like a good little preschool child. I hate these headaches. They take everything from me, my words, my independence.

I came home and got in the bed. Cats, of course, spotted a prone figure and piled up with me, warm and comforting, and since I was inexplicably cold, it was nice. I slept about three hours, got up for awhile to read and eat a comforting bowl of grits, the only thing that didn't sound nasty, then I went back to bed.

Now, after a long night's sleep, everything seems to be reset. Maybe the system is ready for another month of pain-free operation.

My greatest wish for these headaches is that I could find a medicine that wasn't almost as bad as the disease. The Topamax makes me so forgetful, makes me forget names of people and things, and the Maxalt, when I have to take it, shuts me down almost completely. I guess this is all to keep me humble, to remind me that I'm not Wonder Woman after all, and I should just bear it with patience. That's hard for me, though. I'm not known for my patience. Maybe this is my chance to improve.