Migraine: First in ages -irksome, to say the least.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/irksome/

I am irked: Could do without this, frankly…

They started in my mid-teens: Disabling headaches, with accompanying aura, which had me bed-bound and moaning with pain in a darkened room. In 2003, I was hospitalised (and had a brain scan and lumbar puncture) with the worst migraine thus far: It went on for ten days or more.

What can I tell you? Severe, or continuous, stress brings them on. The one in 2003 came about three weeks into jury service in a murder trial. As a result, I had to be removed from the jury.

Saturday morning, I woke feeling dizzy, had vertigo, muffled hearing, tinnitus and strange alterations in my vision. Panic too. In retrospect, the hours at the laptop were not a good idea – but we do not always think these things through, do we? Besides, it had been such a long time since my last migraine that I assumed, and hoped, that they were finally behind me for good.

The aura manifestations continued all over the weekend. I was not able, unfortunately, to find, let alone press, panic and worry’s off button. The situation I am in is so stressful and anxiety-inducing at present that, in a sense, I am only surprised that it has taken this long for my head to get in on pain’s act.

The headache (huh! such an anodyne word for migraine’s ghastliness) struck yesterday evening. I got into bed and lay in darkness, the way I had as a teenager. Flashes of dark light seemed to be zooming through my skull. I couldn’t get comfortable, no matter how I lay. Cotton wool filled my mind, barring coherent thought but, most horribly, allowing the demons of panic (particularly those which insisted that I was having a stroke) to gibber and snigger and tweak my fear response to their evil hearts’ content. The unremitting hammers of pain thudded up and down. I felt sick every time I moved. I wanted to cry – but knew, from ancient experience, that it would make things worse.

It is like a heavy band round the head, a constricting circle of intense pain, a crown of thorns. My eyes look bloodshot and are sore. I feel shaky and afraid this morning. The ringing in the head remains, as do wispy clouds of pain, and surges of nausea.

If I could just stop worrying, it would help. But there is no time out from my current situation. I’ve got to see it through to the end – an end I hope will be the polar opposite of bitter. But I am up against it. My positive visions are, in a manner of speaking, doing battle with much darker and more negative ones – and, unfortunately, I do not have the power to banish the latter because they do not emanate from my mind. Arrowing them back to sender has had no effect thus far, though I do take my inner bow and fire strongly and accurately.

The migraine has been a nasty jar, an unpleasant surprise. But, given my somatic history, it shouldn’t have been, should it?