Don't Call it a Migraine

So last night, around 2000, my head began to ache.  Then came the light-sensitivity, and finally the nausea.  I was in bed by 2100, desperately trying to fall asleep before it got worse.  "Migraine Lite", I called it in my status update, and I wasn't kidding.

See, I used to get migraines fairly regularly when I was a child- not sure why, but I did.  Even at six I knew that moving only made the pain worse, but it hurt so much I couldn't help but writhe.  It hurt so much I would hallucinate from the pain.  It was an awful, awful thing, although as an adult my sympathy is torn between child-me, and my mother, who (a migraine sufferer, herself) wasn't able to do anything to make it better beyond gently stroking my temples (an action which, to this day, means "love" to me).  Fortunately, I outgrew those horrible migraines- but the memory remains.

I woke up around 0100 from the pain, and the nausea, flailed out of bed and took more pain killers.  Woke up again when my alarm went off at 0630: my life remained one giant NOPE.  Half an hour later I crawled out of bed, put on the bare minimum of acceptable clothing, and drove into work to take care of a few Must Be Done things so that I could come back home to bed.

"This is how I know it's not a real migraine," I told Nathan as I slipped on my flip flops, "Because if it was a real migraine I wouldn't be able to do anything by lay in bed and cry."

I was back in bed by 0745, wrapped in my improvised eye-mask.

Pajama shirt secured with a scarf.  Knot to the front to reduce skull discomfort.

I lay there thinking to myself that migraines, even quasi-migraines, are one of the worst ways to be ill because you literally can't do anything but lay there.  No reading, no internet, no television, no music.  Just darkness and silence and as little movement as you can manage.  It's hard to sleep because it hurts so badly, but sometimes you get lucky and sleep comes, anyway.

Around 1130 I tentatively removed my eye-mask- the light was still too bright, but it didn't hurt.

"Progress," I muttered.  Then the dog barked, and that didn't hurt, either, so I slowly sat upright, and didn't have even the slightest urge to vomit.

So I went in to work and honestly spent a good deal of it hiding in the darkened break room, but hey- at least it wasn't a migraine.