Triggers

The lurching. Is it hot tea hitting the empty stomach? The Venetian blinds in the shower? Something coming out in the steam? Should I bleach the showerhead?

Twelve hours back in NJ and the migraine was with me. Before bed there was a loud humming. I asked my mate if he could hear it but he could not. It was so loud it seemed to be almost like hands pressed against my ears. But maybe it was just me? I had flown into NJ from Seattle, had the altitude of flying left my head in a hum?

And it is not like I did not have migraines while in WA. But they followed the old rule, just appearing during my period. They were visual, and they affected my mind. I saw blurry fuzzy bubbling things on all the edges of my sight, and sometimes hallucinated cats. Sometimes the cats were real. I tried to say “relatives” and the word “elephants” came out. Not once, but twice. And I kept repeating “Math man exam, math man exam” while trying to say just “math exam” or “math test.” But the pain part only crept in a few times and I kept it at bay with ibuprofen, 600 mg almost every day.

But now in NJ, today as I got in the shower, the lurching sickness hit again, and I have to wonder if there is an environmental factor. But I don’t know how to start looking. Everything has holes in it.