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Staring at the ceiling......
Oct. 19th, 2018 12:35 amI stopped drinking coffee after 6 pm years ago. Unless it’s decaf, that is. I even have decaf tea in the house. I already have trouble falling asleep as it is. Caffeine too late in the day compounds the problem.
After dinner tonight, I thought I’d try finishing the spinning I need to do for the baby blanket I’m planning for the baby our niece and nephew are having in January. Mother Nature had other ideas for me tonight.
I get classic migraines. Classic in that not only do I get the warning aura in advance of the headache, other than my gender, I could be right out of the textbook. It’s all there: family history, visual aura, onset in adolescence, reliably predictable triggers. Red wine? It’s death in a glass as far as I’m concerned. My very first migraine happened at a wine and cheese party when I was 17, less than 45 minutes after my very first (and last!) glass of red wine. Along the way, I learned to avoid op art, and strobe lights, triggers mom also has. I discovered the hard way, never drive across a suspension bridge at dawn or dusk.
As a young man, the headaches were a plague. They were relatively frequent, but early on I proved to respond pretty reliably first to ergotamine, and then, later on to triptans. They almost never failed to abort a headache, or block one if I got the meds into me fast enough. My aura usually lasts 20 minutes before the headache begins, often longer. Generally it’s enough time to take the meds. That is if I have them. Tonight, I didn’t.
Caffergot was the first Med they tried on me. It was ergotamine with a hefty dose of caffeine. Worked like a charm, most of the time. That was followed by Ergostat a sublingual preparation that worked faster than the oral. It was made by a pharmaceutical company at their plant in Puerto Rico, a factory taken out by a hurricane just weeks before the first triptan hit the market. Imitrex proved equally effective.
Fifteen years ago, in a trip to San Diego I was caught in aura with no triptans on hand. We were at the SD Zoo with our then young godchildren, so leaving for an ER wasn’t a viable option. Further, my aura royally distorts my vision. Driving is not an option when it happens. In panic I turned to caffeine to see if I could break the aura and it worked. It took a whole bloody pot, and I was in an out of the men’s room for an hour, but that was preferable to the abject misery I would have been in otherwise.
As I’ve aged, the migraines have become infrequent, rare enough they catch my off guard. Right after I sat down to my wheel after supper, I went into aura. I put the fiber down & asked my husband to pour me a cuppa joe. I downed it, and asked him to get me another. While he went off to the kitchen, I Brailled my way to the bathroom, fetched what I thought was the NoDoz, and returned to the bedroom. I had Lanny check the bottle, to be certain I had the caffeine tablets. Like I said, my functional vision is shot during migraine aura. I downed two of them with the next mug of coffee and then got horizontal with a pillow over my eyes.
It worked. 45 minutes of aura, but no actual headache tonight. The downside? It’s almost 5 hours later and I’m wired, staring at the blasted ceiling, as my husband lies next to me, out cold.
Morpheus, oh Morpheus! Where fore art thou, Morpheus?
It’s going to be a long night.
After dinner tonight, I thought I’d try finishing the spinning I need to do for the baby blanket I’m planning for the baby our niece and nephew are having in January. Mother Nature had other ideas for me tonight.
I get classic migraines. Classic in that not only do I get the warning aura in advance of the headache, other than my gender, I could be right out of the textbook. It’s all there: family history, visual aura, onset in adolescence, reliably predictable triggers. Red wine? It’s death in a glass as far as I’m concerned. My very first migraine happened at a wine and cheese party when I was 17, less than 45 minutes after my very first (and last!) glass of red wine. Along the way, I learned to avoid op art, and strobe lights, triggers mom also has. I discovered the hard way, never drive across a suspension bridge at dawn or dusk.
As a young man, the headaches were a plague. They were relatively frequent, but early on I proved to respond pretty reliably first to ergotamine, and then, later on to triptans. They almost never failed to abort a headache, or block one if I got the meds into me fast enough. My aura usually lasts 20 minutes before the headache begins, often longer. Generally it’s enough time to take the meds. That is if I have them. Tonight, I didn’t.
Caffergot was the first Med they tried on me. It was ergotamine with a hefty dose of caffeine. Worked like a charm, most of the time. That was followed by Ergostat a sublingual preparation that worked faster than the oral. It was made by a pharmaceutical company at their plant in Puerto Rico, a factory taken out by a hurricane just weeks before the first triptan hit the market. Imitrex proved equally effective.
Fifteen years ago, in a trip to San Diego I was caught in aura with no triptans on hand. We were at the SD Zoo with our then young godchildren, so leaving for an ER wasn’t a viable option. Further, my aura royally distorts my vision. Driving is not an option when it happens. In panic I turned to caffeine to see if I could break the aura and it worked. It took a whole bloody pot, and I was in an out of the men’s room for an hour, but that was preferable to the abject misery I would have been in otherwise.
As I’ve aged, the migraines have become infrequent, rare enough they catch my off guard. Right after I sat down to my wheel after supper, I went into aura. I put the fiber down & asked my husband to pour me a cuppa joe. I downed it, and asked him to get me another. While he went off to the kitchen, I Brailled my way to the bathroom, fetched what I thought was the NoDoz, and returned to the bedroom. I had Lanny check the bottle, to be certain I had the caffeine tablets. Like I said, my functional vision is shot during migraine aura. I downed two of them with the next mug of coffee and then got horizontal with a pillow over my eyes.
It worked. 45 minutes of aura, but no actual headache tonight. The downside? It’s almost 5 hours later and I’m wired, staring at the blasted ceiling, as my husband lies next to me, out cold.
Morpheus, oh Morpheus! Where fore art thou, Morpheus?
It’s going to be a long night.
