Free my Brain from Migraine Pain

My Migraine Story

What's your Migraine story?  We all have one (all of us with Migraine disease, anyway).  Having a sensitive nervous system sets us apart from the majority of people around us, and we all go through a process of realizing or coming to terms with that.  With what it means to us and with how it impacts us.  That process  and story have become clearer to me as I have entered the on-line Migraine community, in this curious role of migraine blogger. 

I have worked as a coach for many years now, helping people set goals, make choices, and live powerful lives, both in personal and business contexts.  In the course of that work I have had to make many accommodations to my Migraine disease, my chronic fatigue syndrome, and my recurrent sinusitis (to name the major culprits).  I have had the privilege of helping a number of other people with chronic conditions figure out how to structure their lives, businesses and careers so they can live fully despite their illnesses.  The moment of truth for me came when I realized, about 7 months ago, that my chronic illnesses are not just an impediment in my life.  They are an opportunity to share my professional tools and skills, and the wisdom I have accumulated, to help others manage their lives with Migraine.  I was already doing it, but I had one of those moments where perception shifts, and I saw that this could be a major focus for me.  Call it an epiphany, an aha, or a moment of madness, but here I am.

In my own journey it's not a bad thing to be looking at my life through the lens of Migraine disease.  I am not interested in having that be all that defines me, but it is dangerous to ignore it.  I have questioned a lot how my life might have been different without this condition.  I approach this question now after nearly a half-century of life.

I’ve had migraines since at least my teens.  I don’t remember the first, but at 17 after surgery at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx (that’s another story), leaving the hospital we drove past the Montefiore Headache Center and I thought “Wow, someone actually treats headaches?  Someday, maybe soon, I’ll have to go there.”  So I’m guessing I had migraines before 17.  Certainly, the first few I remember clearly, in my mid-twenties, I was already calling them migraines.  I could distinguish the headaches with nausea, vomiting, and nearly unbearable sensitivity to light and sound, from the regular, run of the mill headaches.

In retrospect, migraines have had a big impact on my life and my choices, even though they didn’t become frequent for me until my early forties.  The biggest impact in my earlier years was on my career.  I completed law school and went to work at a big Wall Street firm.  Everyone who knew me was surprised by that choice, but for me it was important to prove I could succeed in a high prestige, high pressure world.  I proved it for two years and left.  In the meantime I had some doozies - vomiting in the gutter in NYC became a familiar shame in my life.  I would have told you at the time that my migraines were triggered by stress.  But in retrospect, those moments of high stress came with sleep disturbances (pulling all-nighters to get a brief finished or prep for court), excess caffeine, and the poor eating that went along with them.  I went into the less pressured environment of a legal services office, and migraines became less frequent, until after my first child was born.  Then I had the new pressure of juggling baby and child care, parenthood, chronic lack of sleep, with part-time legal work.  Oh, and let me tell you about part-time legal work.  Part time in the law is like 80+ hours this week and none for the next 2 weeks, not like "I'll work Monday, Wednesday and Friday when I have child care!"   A set up for stress, exhaustion, a frantic life.  By our mid-thirties we had two kids, a house, a yard, a mortgage, and one of us (me) got sick a lot. 

I left the practice of law a decade ago and began doing work that I could structure in a way that worked in my life.  Writing and coaching.  Doing that work while making sure that I slept enough, ate right, used meditation as a regular practice.  I made those career and lifestyle changes just in time to develop anaphylactic allergies to pain-killers; just in time to have a sudden increase in my migraine frequency from a few a year to a few a week. 

To tell you the whole story would require a book.  I'll let you know when I've gotten it written.  The main thing I am looking at today is who I am - as a migraineur, yes, and as me, who is much more than just this disease.  I have always thought of myself as tough.  You can laugh if you want.  Yes, I'm rather small and soft, not particularly athletic, and I'm not a mean person (though I can be sarcastic).  There's a mental toughness, though, a determination to keep going, to build, to create.  And on the other side of that, I have  to accept my delicacy.  We are sensitive, we migraineurs.  Sensitive to our environments.  Vulnerable to odd things that don't bother other people.  I can't seem to change the fact that I get sick a lot. 

For a working symbol, I'm going to use my Iris.  They are profoundly rich and beautiful.  They do bruise and wilt easily.  They need to be fed, watered and cared for.  But they keep coming back, and growing, taking more ground.  They are a connection to the splendor of life.

What's your Migraine story?

- Megan

We've moved! Come over to our new site www.freemybrain.com for new content on managing life with Migraines and chronic illness.        

More Time Management for Migraineurs: Managing the Time we Have

Do try this at home.  And at work.  I wrote a post a while back on How do you Manage Life with Migraine?, about managing our time when migraines interrupt us all the time.  Those of you receiving the newsletter got an expanded version of that post in the article "Time Management for Migraineurs (or, how can you get everything done when you can't get anything done?)." 

The gist of those pieces was that 1) whatever is on your list, you must learn to accept that you will never get it all done; 2) you need to choose what is most important to you and put those things in your schedule first; and 3) if you keep detailed lists of what you are working on, next steps, what you need to handle if you get sick, and what you need to care for yourself, you will best be able to pick up where you left off.  I  recommend Time Management from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern, as the best system I have come across for managing your time to make sure that you spend it on what is most important to you.  And as I mentioned last week, Teri Robert has taken this idea of list-making and planning for Migraines much further in the helpful article MAPP Your Migraine!

All of that said, it occurred to me last week that I had left an important piece out.  This may look like a blinding flash of the obvious, but it hit me that a key piece to making this all work is that we can only manage the time we have.  Please don't say "Duh" yet.  Take a moment to let this sink in.

I read an intriguing post on How to Cope with Pain earlier this month, called Time Management and Pain.  What intrigued me was that rather than laying out any nitty-gritty on scheduling and managing time, the article focused on "pacing ourselves and keeping stress to a minimum."  In other words, to manage time, we need to manage our own, often over-achieving and denial-ridden, selves! 

We can only manage the time we have.  I looked back over my Migraine and Wellness calendars for the last 5 years.  I'm happy to say that my time spent incapacitated by Migraine and my other illnesses decreased over those 5 years from 27% of the time to 22% of the time.  I have focused on increasing that trend, with mixed results.  I go up and down; there are months where I'm down more than I'm up.  What I have not always remembered is that, however you slice it, I will be down for the count about 25% of the time. 

When I look at a beautiful, clear, blank work week in my calendar, I can't say, "Oh, goody, 50-60 working hours to schedule into!"  Into that week I need to put all of the things that allow me to maintain my health, to pace myself and keep stress to a minimum.  For me that includes exercise every day that I am capable of doing it.  It includes 20 minutes of meditation or relaxation practice every day.  It includes eating lunch away from my desk - taking breaks that are real breaks.  And once I have put all those things in, that help me keep stress down and stay well, I still only have about 75% of the remaining time available for my work! 

This means if I set deadlines for myself, I set them taking that percentage of time into consideration.  It means when I block out my week, I leave blocks of "not working" time.  It means when I come right down to it, I have about 27 hours of productive working time that I can count on in a week.   Now I'm not a workplace productivity expert, but I have worked in a lot of places, for others and for myself, and I don't think many people are really productive much more of their time than that. 

I have felt such freedom since I have been scheduling this way!   My productive time tends to be really productive; I stay focused on what I've set out to accomplish in that time, knowing that I have a reasonable  break coming.  I can use my "not-working" time for those water-cooler type conversations we tend to have at work, or for actual work if I choose.  Of course I can't control that I will schedule my migraines into the hours I have allotted, but there's room in the schedule to rearrange things when I do get sick.  And when I am sick I don't worry about what's not getting done.  Without the added stress of that worry, I can recover faster.

Since I am self-employed, I know I have more freedom around these issues than some of you who hold down "regular" jobs.  But you can find ways to use these ideas.  It may be about how you approach your time away from work.  It may be about how you pace yourself at work.  Please share your thoughts on managing the time you actually have!

- Megan

We’ve moved! For more on managing life with migraine please visit us at www.freemybrain.com

Taking Care of Myself

That's what I'm doing today.  It's 5:00 and I think I've missed status migrainous by about 4 hours.  Status migrainous is a condition where a migraine has continued for 72 hours without a 4 hour complete break in  pain while awake.  It is a serious condition which carries an increased risk of stroke due to long-term dilation of the blood vessels around the brain.  I am lying in bed with my fingers crossed because my migraine seems to have finally broken after about 68 hours. 

The pain started Tuesday evening and has varied from about a level 2 on a 1 - 10 scale to about a level 8 or 8.5.  It has varied from itchy nagging pain all over my head to furious pounding pain in both temples.  It has been a particularly sneaky persistent presence, sending me strange nightmares.  I have woken up two mornings in a row with the sense of something awful sitting on top of my brain, waiting to pounce.  I have used 4 doses of Imitrex on it.  Finally today, after all of today in bed, most of yesterday, and half the day before; and after 4 expensive, befuddling and nauseating doses of Imitrex, I think the pain is gone.  I'm afraid to move in case it's just asleep and I wake it up again.  For many of you, this will sound quite familiar.

Nearly all of my plans for the last few days have gone out the window.  What have I accomplished?  I did have an important business conversation with my husband.  I did gather up a list of all the homework my son has missed while he's been out of school with the flu.  I did wash a few dishes here and there.  I did about 20% of the business work I had on the agenda for the last few days.  I helped my daughter find her uniform for work.  I'm about to be really ambitious and dig up some pretty pictures to illustrate this post.  Other than that, I have been taking care of myself.

What does that look like?  Today, and the past few days, it has looked like sleeping late, staying in bed in my pajamas for much of the day.  Today it involved not even taking a shower so as to keep my head quiet.  Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I hate not taking a shower!  It has looked like saying no to even talking to my family when the pain level was high.  It has looked like keeping track of how long this migraine has gone on, diarying about it, and calling the doctor for help.   I spoke to the nurse this afternoon and now have a plan in place for what to do if the migraine doesn't break, or recurs, over this holiday weekend.  I'm happy to say the Emergency Room is not the first line of defense in the plan!

I went on the My Migraine Connection forum to connect with my buddies over there and gripe about this long migraine.  One of my friends told me she was proud of me for taking care of myself.  It was a revelation to me, a welcome one, to realize that I have been doing that - taking care of myself! 

After 30+ years of migraines, coaching others to accept their disease and build the best life they can around it, I still struggle with acceptance.  After basing my self care on meditation and relaxation exercises and building my life around my illnesses, I still fight tooth and nail.  I didn't take an Imitrex Tuesday night because I wasn't positive it was a migraine.  Maybe I could have prevented the following days of pain if I hadn't been in denial then.  Regret is pointless.  Great thanks to Gret for reminding me of what I am accomplishing today.  I am taking care of myself.  The shower will still be there tomorrow.  Chances are, so will the dirty dishes.  And the newsletter I owe to you, my subscribers.  And the garden beds to weed.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing tonight, remember to take care of yourselves.  I hope for all of us a pain-free tomorrow.

- Megan   

    

Have your Bag Packed for your Next Migraine

It's a little bit like having the emergency supplies ready for a power failure or having the first aid kit stocked and ready.  We talked awhile back about having your lists ready in the post How do you Manage Life with Migraines? so that you don't have to think about what you need when you are in the midst of migraine and can't think. 

Teri Robert has posted a terrific article on My Migraine Connection this week called MAPP Your Migraine!  MAPP stands for Migraine Action Plan and Pack.  In it, Teri pulls together many of the wonderful resources she has created for migraineurs, including helpful articles and checklists.  In addition to having a treatment plan ready with your doctor, a plan for the emergency room, plans for managing kids or home responsibilities,  and a place set up in your home where you can be quiet, safe and comforted, Teri also recommends that you have a bag packed for travel with everything you might need if you get a migraine away from home.  I say thank you, Teri, and I recommend that you hop on over to My Migraine Connection and read the article!

I also want a backpack built into my jacket like this penguin so I really don't have to think about it!

- Megan

Migraine brain on practical track.

                               Penguin image courtesy of Ambra Galassi

Interview on WEGO Health

Hi all.  Adrienne at WEGO Health interviewed me and published the interview yesterday in her blog at WEGO Health.  Take a look at the Spotlight Interview if you'd like to learn more about what I'm up to with Migraine Management Coaching, handling my life, what I'm working on and all that jazz.

Cheers,
Megan

Coming to you from a 10 day migraine free streak - Woohoo!

Alternatives to Compact Fluorescents - for Migraineurs and the Rest of You!

I posted last week about compact fluorescents and their impact on some migraineurs, epileptics, people with lupus and possibly other conditions.  While we work on getting Congress to amend the law which would phase out sales of incandescent bulbs by 2012, here are some thoughts about energy saving alternatives you can use at home.  Thanks to my friend Dave Cohen, of DEC Architect, an architect specializing in green design, for these suggestions.

1. Turn your lights down low - installing and using dimmers with your incandescent bulbs can save a surprising amount of energy.  Using a light bulb at 75% of full wattage can actually cut electricity use by 50%!  If you're like me, you prefer the lights on the low side to ward off migraines anyway. 
2. Pull your window curtain - use natural light as much as possible!  If you are doing new construction, build to take advantage of natural light with the orientation of your windows and use of reflective surfaces to catch and multiply that natural light.  Even with existing windows, let as much light in as possible, and do what you can to reflect it back around the room.
3. Shine the light up - (sorry I ran out of Bob Marley references there) torchiere style halogen lights can illuminate a room with less wattage than an incandescent.  Halogens are one of the lower energy use lighting sources that are under further development.  Shining the light up on the ceiling spreads it; it is also easier on migraine brains than light shining down into our eyes.
4. Light up with LEDs - LEDs are another alternative technology which are being further developed.  You know, those bright little green, blue, etc, lights?  I know some migraineurs have trouble with LEDs, which can be very bright.  An LED light which can be dimmed would be a great alternative.  (They could also save a lot of energy by removing the LED lights on my computer power cord, so my darn room could actually be dark at night.)

Any more energy saving, migraine friendly lighting tips?  Please share them in the comments.  Thanks to Dave Hobbs and his comment on the last post, for inspiring this post!

- Megan

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine (but not too brightly...)

We’ve moved! For more on managing life with migraine please visit us at www.freemybrain.com

Protect Migraineurs from Compact Fluorescents

In December 2007, the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007, which mandates the phasing out of incandescent lighting from stores by 2012, in order to conserve energy and help the environment. The act does not mandate the use of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL’s), but given that they are the most widely available energy saving bulbs on the market at this time, the least expensive, and the only ones which can be used with existing lighting fixtures, the likelihood is that they will become the standard.  There are other types of energy saving lighting available and under development; including LED lighting, halogens, and improvements in energy efficiency of incandescents.  Let's encourage the growth of those technologies!

We migraineurs are just as supportive of energy conservation as anyone else. We also want to reverse global warming and create a sustainable future. But we strongly support making that happen in a way that does not involve CFL’s! Although CFL’s do not visibly flicker as do old fashioned fluorescents, they still flicker, and that flicker is perceptible to the brain if not to the naked eye. Many migraineurs find that CFL’s are a trigger for them. They can also trigger epileptic seizures and lupus flare-ups.

A group of us who blog about and advocate for migraineurs and migraine research have put together a petition, asking Congress to amend the Energy Independence & Security Act to encourage development of other energy-saving technology. We too want a green future, we just don’t want one where we cannot take part in life outside our homes, for fear of encountering migraine triggers. Please join us in asking Congress to amend this law. You can sign the petition at ipetitions.com at this link: Protect Migraineurs from Compact Fluorescents.

- Megan Oltman

Please help us keep the world livable!

                               Compact fluorescent image courtesy of J. Nathan Matias.

We've moved! Come over to our new site www.freemybrain.com for new content on managing life with Migraines and chronic illness.

May Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival is up!

Please go check out the May 12, 2008, edition of the Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival.  The carnival is posted at Somebody Heal Me.  The theme of this month's carnival is "How to integrate exercise into a life filled with migraines."

There are lots of great entries on how to keep active, and then quite a few on other topics, including "exercises" in relaxing and calming our systems - a wonderful juxtaposition of inner and outer fitness!   I contributed one of the "inner" ones, as I've been quite challenged on the "outer"[ front lately.  The good news is that I am very encouraged by the posts in this carnival - read them - they will help!

Submit your blog article to the June 2008 edition of the Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival using the carnival submission form or by sending entries directly to Diana by e-mail.

The June 2008 theme will be "How to Have a Fun, Healthy Vacation in Spite of your Migraines." Entries are due by midnight on Friday, June 6th (the end of the day).  Look for the June carnival to appear on Monday, June 9th.

- Megan

Caffeine Withdrawal and Weekend Migraines

Another piece of the puzzle fell in place for me yesterday, as I watched a podcast of Dr. Richard Lipton, professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, explaining the difference between Migraine & headache.  Thanks to Marijke Durning, R.N. of Help My Hurt for posting the podcast in The Difference between Migraine and Headache.  I recommend the podcast as a general explanation of what a migraine is and what sets it aside from an "ordinary" headache.  You might ask your skeptical or uninformed friends and family members to watch it.   

The new idea for me had to do with Dr. Lipton's explanation of the role of caffeine.   I already knew that:

1. caffeine is a vaso-constrictor and so can help treat a migraine attack in progress, by constricting the dilated and inflamed blood vessels around the brain - in fact there are several migraine medications that contain caffeine, such as Cafergot; and
2. caffeine withdrawal can trigger migraine attacks (I have experienced this first hand in a too rapid attempt to get caffeine out of my system).

It is also common for some migraineurs to have smooth sailing during the week, only to be beached by migraines on the weekend, our supposed "time off."  This happens to me frequently.   Since migraine triggers are "stackable," we often have to analyze what may be in the stack to figure out what actually triggered the migraine.  Explanations for the weekend migraine include:

1. stress let-down - perhaps the body's reaction to  a drop in the stress hormones we produce to function during the work week;
2. change in sleep pattern - a trigger for many migraineurs who find we need to keep our bed-times and waking times as regular as possible to avoid migraines;
3. change in eating patterns on the weekend - if you eat much later than usual, your body may interpret it as missing a meal! (I have found that I need to get up and feed myself on a Saturday morning to avoid a migraine.  No waiting for Danny to get up and cook one of his weekend breakfast feasts - I can't enjoy my Oeufs beurre noir if I've already gotten a migraine waiting for him to get up!); and
4. I suspect that if you take medications and supplements at the same time in the morning five days a week and then vary that time on the weekend, this too messes with your migraineur's sensitive brain.

But here's the new idea (you've probably guessed it by now) - if you have a cup of coffee at 6:30 a.m. Monday through Friday, and you sleep in until 9 on Saturday, what do you wake up into?  Caffeine withdrawal!  If your brain is habituated to caffeine at a particular time and doesn't get it, the addictive little critter (i.e. your brain) starts screaming for its cup of Joe while you're still sleeping!   Add this factor to the others discussed above and you're in for a weekend of pain!

I'm not sure what the solution is here - I know, I know, get up at the same time every day.  I'm still very resistant to the idea, although I have to confess I can't sleep past about 8:00 on weekends any more.  Perhaps an IV caffeine drip at 7 a.m. - nah - no sleeping in that way!  Cut out morning caffeine entirely - radical notion!

Dr. Lipton recommends limiting caffeine to one cup per day, and using more to treat migraines when they arise.  I am going to give this a try.  And I will have my one cup per day after lunch!  If you decide to try is as well, a word of advice.  To avoid withdrawal migraines, cut your caffeine back very gradually.  If you have 3 cups in the morning, cut back to 2 1/2 for at least 3 or 4 days.  Then cut back to 2... You get the picture.

Happy Mother's Day all you moms out there!  I am about to be served my breakfast in bed.  (I got up at 8 and had toast and coffee.  This one is for the ritual of it.)  Wishing everyone a pain free day.

- Megan
Caffeine addict, heading back on the wagon.  Trying not to repeat yesterday's weekend migraine!

                Cup of Coffee image courtesy of Tammy Green; Breakfast image courtesy of Ian Rotea; Alarm Clock image courtesy of Chris Metcalf

We’ve moved! For more on managing life with migraine please visit us at www.freemybrain.com

Weird Migraine Trigger Winners

It was a tough call, but our judges Kerrie of The Daily Headache and Diana of Somebody Heal Me have selected our winners in the Weirdest Migraine Triggers Ever contest (with yours truly called in as a tie-breaker).   

Remember, these triggers were all weird enough to beat my pouring-down-rain-with-wiper-arm-scratching-windshield trigger!

And a drumroll please, the winners are:

1st Place to Koryn for the Crayon Dilemma (note - no gold crayon used in photo):

The weirdest trigger that I've ever came across was one of my step aunts. Since a very young age, the gold crayon in her crayon box would induce a migraine. No other gold colored other stuff, or real gold its self does anything, but just the gold crayon. Strangeness.  All my step aunt had to do was look at her gold crayon. Poor thing couldn't color with it at all. Her mom ended up going through her crayon box each year when they bought her new ones for school and take the gold crayon out. Her teacher watched in class if the projects used crayons. Very strange trigger.

2nd place to MJ (of Rhymes with Migraine) for the Exhaust Fan Mystery:

The last apartment DBF and I lived in was a studio, with only one large-ish window that opened onto a courtyard. Our apartment was wedged into the corner, which meant we had hardly any air circulation at all, especially in the summer. This particular apartment building also had a high turnover rate among tenants, so our neighbors changed relatively frequently.

About two months before we moved out of that apartment, I discovered a new trigger. One afternoon after work, DBF and I were minding our own business when all of a sudden this stench, an unbelievable (and unidentifiable) stench came - not wafting - but pumping into our only window. I had a migraine within seconds, as my eyes teared up and I looked desperately to DBF, begging him to close the window. Mind you, this was the summer and our apartment did not have A/C. Neither of us could stand this stench though so he closed the window without complaint.

We complained to the leasing office the very next day, but of course when they came to check it out, no cause could be found, as there was no trace of the stench.

Unfortunately for both of us, every evening after work, like clockwork, this stench would be pumped into our apartment and we'd have to close our window. We quickly became wise to the stench's ways and closed the window when we came home from work. We continued to complain to the leasing office, telling them we had to leave our only window closed, but they were mostly useless. They claimed the woman in the apartment below us had left for vacation without cleaning her fridge, and her food had spoiled, which had caused the stench. But the stench continued after this problem had been cleaned up, so I was skeptical of this explanation.

Fortunately, DBF and I both have backgrounds in architecture, so we decided to investigate the source of this stench for ourselves. We noticed the exhaust vent for our downstairs neighbor's apartment was directly outside our window. Ah ha! At least once a day, the vent fan inside this apartment would cycle on, venting the apartment, and pumping the stench into our window. The stench would disappear again when the fan cycled off.

That same week we figured this out (this had been going on well over a month now) we dragged the apartment manager into the courtyard. We pointed out the exhaust vent and told her our theory. She got her maintenance guy and went to the woman's apartment - which, apparently, smelled so bad that our apartment manager was gagging in the hallway. (She got no sympathy from me!)

Here's where the story gets even better. Our apartment manager, after discovering the source of the problem we had been complaining about for over a month, started to politely request that the woman in the stinky apartment clean up her mess. The woman did not clean up her mess. The manager was unwilling to do anything other than knock on the woman's door, so DBF finally taped the exhaust vent closed so we could open our window again.

We found out later that this stench was cat funk. This awful woman refused to clean up after her poor cat, and had been keeping its filthy litterbox under the exhaust fan. So, I've now added "cat funk from rude and filthy neighbor" to my list of triggers.

Third Place to Deborah (of Weathering Migraine Storms)  for the Dehydrate-Rehydrate-Run Conundrum (note - you can read the entire story at Weathering Migraine Storms at the link above - I have excerpted it here):

I have found a unique little trigger I gave myself while I was trying to alleviate the woes of the migraine blues. I found myself going round and round in a battle of "Catch 22" with fluids.

A word of caution - if you are in the midst of migraine and are looking to hydrate or re-hydrate, be very cautious of the ingredients in your bottled fluids. If they contain "sucralose" or "sucrose syrup" you may think twice before drinking twice. Why? Your body just doesn't absorb them thar ingredients, thus you just poo them in liquid-like form, rapidly, if you continue to drink and drink and drink them.

Case in point, Moi: The first week of the month, I end up at infusion with the monster. I'm the usual squinting, "headachy" nauseaous self. (for lack of words right now), I have two bottlesof said syrupy water with me. oh yummo. Start infusion a little later. drink drink. Notice after a few days, and oh four bottles of the stuff a day, lots of diarrhea. hmmm, sometimes that happens with migraine.

Two weeks go by, OH, WAIT! I had also started Melatonin to get some MUCH-needed sleep. Whew, almost forgot that. so anyhoo, I'm sleeping, I'm drinking more of the water because the weather was actually getting pretty nice here. The sun was, whoa, shining, and, AND, the weather was warm. I don't care much for water, it makes me gag, and gagging is a precursor for barfing, which will in itself is just gross, so I like the taste of the lemony syrupy vitamin water that I was drinking. Plus, I felt I was getting all kinds of oober benifits with the added B vitamins. blah blah blah. drink more tastey syrupy water.

In the meantime, I'm noticing a need to, well, go to the "office" a little more often. than usual. Me poo has started to um loosten. By the end of the week, loosten had come to a full-on explosion. Every few hours. Which, naturally made me drink more. Didn't want to DEHYDRATE! Each time I'd eat, my food would slide into home within 1 1/2 hours. I was running like A-rod, faster, faster, faster each time. God forbid if I was in public!!!

Naturally, another storm hit me in the skull. The more I "liquidated my assets," the more I drank. For fear of becoming dehydrated, it's all I could do, drink more of my yummy water; and it hit me - like the brick that hit my head, maybe it's the vitamins in the water doing it!! So I took myself off the water for a week.

But I was still having the. problem. So I thought, maybe the Melatonin?? I took myself off that. We decided, maybe there was something else going on; we called my internist. They had me in that day, did all kinds of blood work, and I had to (give a sample), to which I apologized for! Oh the questions the questions I was asked. When the blood work came back ok, Deb and I were talking about the water; and I read to her the ingredients - AHA! It was the sucralose. I cannot absorb it so my body just - gets rid of it and everything else with it. I'll say.

*(By the way, I have been informed that Glaceau Vitamin Water, pictured on the truck above, contains no sucralose or aspartame.  I didn't mean to implicate them, I just love a pretty picture.)

And an Honorable Mention to Laura for a lengthy list of triggers, including the Antihistamine-Pollen Paradox:

• jalepenos
• sun/ heat
• too much sleep, not enough
• Alcohol (especially red wine)
• salt
• cheese
• salami/ preserved meats*
• change in air pressure
• change in altitude <- i hate that one!
• soups*
• Chinese food*
• stress letdown
• pms
• Claritin <-AGH!
• dehydration

I tell you, I live in an area where the pollen is horrible and most allergy meds give me a severe migraine.  It's miserable.

*(Little editorial note - wondering if the starred items all have MSG in common?  MSG is a pretty common trigger.)

Thanks to the judges and all the entrants for playing along.  And dear readers, if you have a weird trigger to share, you can leave it in the comments below.

For more about triggers, and how to avoid them, come join the discussion: Migraine Management Coaching: Know and Reduce Your Triggers.  For more on Managing your Life with Migraine, register for our e-course in the upper left corner of this page.

- Megan Oltman

Now don't get trigger-happy!

               Crayon Image courtesy of Ed Schipol, Exhaust Fan image courtesy of cito/John, Vitamin Water image courtesy of Wendy Seltzer, Bee image courtesy of Adrian Campfield

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