My Migraine and Headache Blog

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

07/15/2011

Miserable Migraines

My Migraines et. al (and other chronic conditions) are making me feel more miserable lately. My head actually feels like this photo a looks, a bit transparent, as if my brain may slip out of my head at any moment. My joints are achy and the ringing in my ears is incessant. My muscles hurt all over and I experiencing overwhelming fatigue. I’m not normally a complainer (my son disagrees) but the chronically ill feeling I am having is getting a “little old” now.

A few weeks ago I posed a challenge for anyone who wanted to accept it - keeping a Migraine diary with me. My Migraine diary is looking pretty dismal of late. I seem to be having more Migraines than I ought to (this doesn’t include my chronic head and neck pain) and there are some unavoidable triggers such as weather changes and hormones added to the mix. I’ve been tracking my attacks using the Migraine Notebook by GlaxoSmithKline, and it is a simple, neat and handy way to keep track of them which I can share with my doctor at my next appointment.

The fatigue I’ve been experiencing lately is pretty extreme - so much so I can hardly stay awake or concentrate for more than a few hours at a time. What is happening with my body now? Is it having some kind of autoimmune flare? Which chronic “issue” would it be? Let’s see;

Post-concussion syndrome
Mixed connective tissue
Fibromyalgia – was actually diagnosed.
Intractable headache
“Swollen optic nerves” is this shorthand for Papilledema?
Depression
Chronic head and neck pain
Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension
Thyroid
Cervical Spine Fusion

Any of the above conditions can trigger a Migraine attack and/or head pain for me. How long will this bout last? There is so much I want to do, looking around my home, knowing what needs to be done, knowing I’m unable to do these things in a timely fashion, sometimes it is just too overwhelming and plain sad. Let’s not even talk about being a single mom. Really? It seems the harder I fight to try and ignore what's a flare, the farther away I get from acceptance. I’ve been working on “accepting” chronic illness as part of my life for the last 14 ½ years. I wonder if I will ever get it?

But what are my choices? In the grand scheme of things, life isn’t so awful. It is just very different from what I intended it to be. If someone were to tell me I’d be a disabled, divorced mother of two, I would have said “you’re nuts”! Life has stomped on my toes, and pulled the rug out from under me, literally. Apparently I better dust under that rug and bandage my toes –because no one else is going to do it for me. If could choose a life, it would certainly be one without pain, but that’s not an option right now. I guess I will continue to learn how to accept and cope a life with chronic illness and pain - 0ne day at a time.

Thanks for reading and feel well,