Ouch my Head hurts!

Extreme side effects of Migraines

I am certain that everyone has a side effect from one medication or another.  I know I have.  For me these have ranged from mild to moderate to even pretty severe. Last year I had a severe reaction to an antibiotic.  One that I had taken just 6 months or so before.  When I had taken it before, I had no issues with it at all and it worked quite well for me.  This time however, it about killed me, literally.  I looked like someone had beaten me within an inch of my life.  I had a severe allergic reaction including facial swelling, a rash that covered my body from the neck down and an infected sore on my neck.  The facial swelling was 10x worse than it sounds too, I was unrecognizable.  Two trips to my DR and two ER visits resulted in seeing an Allergist.  This was just to get this thing under control.  And by the way, my son’s 4th Birthday party was in the midst of all of this, so I hosted that almost looking like the one eyed monster.  The swelling around my eyes had gone down just enough prior to the party that they were both fully open.  Thank GOD!

Medication side effects suck.  The packaging always says side effects include, but are not limited to: blah blah blah blah…etc.  Your doctor will decide if any side effects you are experiencing out weigh the benefits of the medication.  Please discuss this with your Dr before stopping any medication…or something like that.  Well alrighty then.  I have had medicine help one condition make me nauseous, but help my ‘condition’, so then I would take yet another drug to combat that.  It goes on and on sometimes.  Fortunately once you stop taking the medications the side effects usually go away, fade away, stop, or just disappear.  One thing about my migraines is that they, themselves, gave me a set of side effects, not the medications.  It was a gradual thing these effects, and they are not something that will go away.  In fact it seems to be something that just grows over time.  Grows, sharpens, hones, I am not sure how to describe it. I am pretty sure I know how it happened though.

I have had these damn headaches for nearly 12 years.  At the absolute pinnacle I had level 10 pain, almost daily and rarely left the confines of my house.  I was in such a state that I had to learn how to re-live my life.  It is a sort of coping mechanism I believe.  In my head, I am mostly functional.  I can usually understand what is being communicated to me, somehow.  I might not have been able to respond back appropriately, because things just didn’t seem to come out correctly.  It would get very frustrating.  I would sometimes feel retarded, for lack of a better word, and would become frustrated.  At the time I did not know exactly why it was so difficult to focus and concentrate on communicating at some points.  It took a while to figure that out, as in a few years.  I was having sensory overload.  Every one of my senses was sharpening and making up for my cognitive skills taking a dive while in migraine mode.  This is the coping mechanism I mentioned.  When your brain is pounding away and it hurts to think or even open one eye, your other senses blossom.  In the wake of my senses becoming super-human, my brain also began to function far above the level I ever bothered to use it at before.  With my cognitive function impaired, my brain found other ways to cope by somehow making a series of what I call files.  I imagine it like a row of file cabinets stocked with folders.  The conversations I was having would simply be recorded and stored in a file and filed away in the appropriate cabinet. I wish I had this ability when I was in College, or High School!  Damn!  I didn’t know it was happening at the time, it would only be after the fact, when I was feeling better for a bit, I would recall a conversation.  During that time the headaches were so bad that and I was so medicated that I thought it was a dream or something I maybe heard, or maybe made up.  It took a while to realize I was actually retaining the information, and even longer to figure out how to get access to it.

The other senses were stepping up as well.  I can hear a pin drop.  Not quite, but on concrete, I can.  At night, when it is very quiet I can actually hear the flowers pushing up through the leaves on the ground.  That is insane, the first few times I thought it was bugs crawling through the leaves.  Nope, it is actually the plants growing.  It is a creepy thought that you can hear that.  I cannot go to movie theaters.  Well, going to the theater is either good or real bad for me.  My husband and I have gone several times and it has been great, with just a few people in the theater.  When the place is packed, it is my worst nightmare.  The volume is too loud, the murmur of the crowd is too much, people chomping popcorn drives me insane and the candy wrappers are my nemesis.  The din of the crowd is so distracting it takes so much effort for me to try to block that, I usually don’t enjoy it.  The movie can be great, but the experience is not.  That is why I have a big screen TV.  If I can’t do something as simple as simple as go out to a movie and enjoy it, I deserve to have the luxury of enjoying it in my home.  My hearing is insane.  I can hear my husband’s truck coming from down the street and I know it is his vehicle.  There is nothing wrong with his truck, or muffler.  I just know it is his.

I have always had an excellent sense of smell.  This can hinder me at times, since certain odors, perfumes and cleansers can actually send me into migraine crisis.  Now my super smeller can pick up the lightest hint of anything.  I can be upstairs and smell my husband smoking a cigar in our garage, which I might add is unattached and set a bit away from the house.  If he walks in just even the back room, I smell it right away.  I can be in my kitchen and smell when a smoker walks in my front door.  I can recognize certain scents by name, that I just pick out of the air.  I have been at an intersection before, and even driving on the road and known someone was smoking pot in a vehicle nearby.  When things reek, they really offend me!  oh.  I won’t even go there!

The visual changes are different from the other senses.  I wear glasses.  I used to wear contacts, but am unable to do so now.  They irritate my eyes and caused pain and an increase in migraines so I quit even trying to wear them.  Oh how I miss them, everything about them!  With migraines there is a measure of darkness that comes along with life.  This is fine with me.  I am fair-haired and have green eyes, I have always worn sunglasses. I have always preferred the dark, being a night owl.  After the migraines started I made my own curtains for the living room.  My are they beautiful!  Scarlett O’Hara wold have been thrilled to wear these as opposed to those dorky green velvet drapes she wore!  A dark, heavy, burgundy, scrunched, almost taffeta like material.  They give the room an atmosphere of almost like being in a movie theater.  This is most excellent, for many days I am wearing sunglasses in the house, even with the curtain. I often get what I call floaters.  They look like small coffee grounds and float across my field of vision.  They don’t hinder my vision, or hurt, or cause me any problems at all, they just float.  Back and forth, back and forth, across my vision.  Eventually they disappear, sometimes they are a precursor to a full-out migraine, sometimes not.  I am used to them by this point.  I can’t do bright lights, not at all, especially in my eyes.  I don’t adjust well.  Strobes will about kill me, not literally, but it feels like it.  Flashlights in my eyes, are shooting pain.  Now, my peripheral vision, is quite astute, my dusky/twilight vision and night vision are excellent!  Deer in a field?  Yep I saw them, a long time ago.

It seems odd to me that all the senses affected are the ones that are also on my head.  The migraines are in my head, but my vision, hearing and sense of smell are all there.  I know it was to compensate for a lack of comprehension when my migraines were really bad.  I know it was, a form of protection, if you will, because I was not functioning to my normal capacity.  This allowed me a way to re-enter society in a somewhat normal capacity. My migraine treatment, at this time was providing a bit more relief that what I had been doing previously.  I was able to get a little job, and although they knew of my disability, it was a sort of mask.  Using my other senses allowed me to cover my cognitive malfunction and seem to be ‘normal’, functional, and at least perform the tasks given to me to the best of my ability. The job was something I could have done, previously, with my eyes closed and in my sleep, and now provided a huge challenge to me, just to get through the shift, but I did it.  I will be forever thankful that they took a chance on me, with a disability, not knowing how it was going to work out.  This is where I was able to use these new skills and learn how to use them to my advantage.

A simple job, working in a restaurant as a hostess.  Sounds ok, I had worked in a restaurant for 10+ years in all aspects from busser to manager.  Here, though, I would have to deal with noise, fluorescent lighting, odors (and not just food, perfume, cleaning products…etc) and everything else that comes with that atmosphere.  I learned to access those files in my head.  When I was having trouble I was able to use pre-loaded conversations when I was seating a table.  It was almost like floating on auto pilot.  The staff and my co-workers were very accommodating.  I learned how to slow down conversations I was having with them, and what they were saying to me, so I could process it.  I found that just slowing down everything that came in helped me understand it easier, and I could then respond appropriately.  I was able to work above the din of the restaurant.  It was difficult, and still is, just like the movie theater.  Years ago, I never would have heard it, and now it is like a marching band in my living room!  But, I found a way to turn down, just a bit, the silverware and glasses and conversations going on around me.  I still heard it, and trust me, you don’t want to be able to hear EVERY conversation in a room, it is not fun.  The only advantage is being able to concentrate on just one, but that is super hard and I don’t try since the one I am usually trying to concentrate on is the one I am having!  There were times I did feel like a freak if I had to wear my sunglasses inside.  I would just have those days when no matter what I did, it was too bright.  I have never shied from explaining why.

This is how I am a pretty functional daily migraine sufferer.  These are the ‘side effects’ I received from the migraines themselves that just don’t quit.  I honestly feel like they have been getting…stronger?  Or better, is maybe the more proper choice of word.  My husband called BS when I told him I could hear the plants growing, but I swear to God that is what it is. ( He didn’t believe how bad my migraine pain was either, until he had a migraine!  He has only ever had one, but it was enough for him!  After that his whole opinion changed!)  I suppose these side effects are better than nausea, or vomiting, hives, rash, swelling or discoloration.  I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.  And it has helped, I used to live at a level 9-10 and never really get out of bed.  Between treatment and my newer socio-environmental coping skills (my new word/definition for this) I feel like I am extremely functional for someone who normally walks around with a level 5-6 on the pain scale.  It just so happens that after surviving so long, as bad as I was, this doesn’t seem all that bad.  I adopted a mantra, or attitude rather.  At about the 6 year mark for the migraines I started thinking “Wow, if I can do this for 6 years I can do about anything.  You want to what?  How long will it take?  2 hours?  Yeah I can do that for 2 hours.”  I mean really what is two hours?  Now, at nearly the 12 year mark, I figure I can survive about anything, within reason.  I won’t go to a loud techno bar with crazy strobe lights, drink 12 beers and hang with a bunch of women under a cloud of perfume, that is asking for trouble…big time!  I have been able to adapt and stay out of the ER for a while though and that is quite an accomplishment for me!  So I guess, not all side effects are bad.  I guess if I must have them I will take these, and since I don’t have a choice I might as well make the best of them.