Monster In My Head

Wednesday, Jul. 19, 2006 - 7:04 a.m.

Yesterday afternoon I was in the shower, with a head full of shampoo, preparing to rinse off and get dried and dressed and head down to the salon for a haircut.

Suddenly my right hand quit working and my right side went weak.

An old friend was making an appearance -- a migraine.

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Now, for those of you who are lucky enough to never have had one, may you never have one.

I had a migraine before, at the end of February in 2004, but the basic lights and sound show is essentially the same, so I'll just reproduce that post, if it 's okay with y'all.

For those who've never had a migraine, it goes kinda like this: First, you take a manual can opener, and you run it across the base of your scalp. Then starting from the back there, where you made the cut, you pull all of the skin loose from ear to ear, then peel it over the top of your head, going from back to front. When you get all the way to the front where your hairline is, stop loosening it.

Then take that big flap of scalp, and depending on how creative you feel,:

1. Pull it down your back, and staple it to your shoulders as best you can, or

2. Split it lengthwise, and tie it under your chin like a scarf.

Then for extra effect, be sure and wear a long semi-opaque gray scarf over your head, with silver sparkles that make it nearly impossible to see.

Put your right arm and your right leg in an Ace bandage and try to walk around like that. This is amusing for an extremely short time.

If you eat anything at all, including breath mints or aything to soothe your stomach, puke your purple guts out. And if you puke, miss the bowl. The reason you'll puke is because of a wonderful migraine symptom called 'gastric stasis' which is truly obnoxious. Your digestive system stops. Every swallow, every miscellaneous bit of stomach acid, everything you try to eat or drink -- none of it will go through, and all of it will pool in your stomach until the migraine subsides, or until it decides to enter society up through your mouth at approximately the speed of sound.

Blue ice on your head and neck is a polite golf clap for the pain. It feels good for about two minutes.

Start making a will. Begin to picture where people will be when they hear the news that your head exploded.

This state of wonderfulness lasts until pain medication is administered through a shot or a patch. I didn't bother with either, because getting out of bed and putting clothes on was something I didn't think I could stand to actually do.

At around eleven at night, my stomach began to growl, which means my innards were functioning again, and by around midnight the pain subsided to merely a bad headache, as opposed to a migraine, which is about six times worse than a headache.

I got up at around five thirty this morning and was able to make some biscuits and have them with a squirt of maple syrup and some butter.

And four Advil LiQuiGels. Whew. :-P

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That's about it. Have a good Wednesday, friends.

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