Moon shaped pill

7-11-11

As soon as I am not so violently ill I am trying the Amerge.

11:15, trying half of a moon shaped pill

take it with some yogurt and a prayer

i kiss the box it came in

and go back to bed with goldfish crackers and a heating pad

what makes me call this a migraine? it is not just the head pain, i have that so much, it is the nausea, the extreme light sensitivity, put me in a dark room, don't move too much. No one talk to me.

11:30 I am now getting nauseaus from having taken the pill. But I take this as a good sign. Strangely, when the triptans seem to work best there is nauseau first.
It is a weird trade-off.

What also makes it a migraine, by my definition, is the way my brain goes nuts through the episodes. While drinking an icy coke i think how good a very hot tea would be and while applying the hot pack i think i need an ice pack not instead but also, as if i have two heads, and two minds who can perceive opposites simultaneously

meanwhile the smell of my own blood makes me nauseaus

i have blocked out all the windows upstairs, pulled shades and blinds, and curtains

for over a month i have been showering in a dark bathroom

it hurts when i cough or sneeze

but hey it is now 11:45 and i think the new pill is helping! I can see out of my left eye!

Wildfire in the head

They cannot stop it.

I need firemen, not doctors.

After all these months it has now spread left.

A dagger in my left eye. Stiff neck. Crushing head pain.

Agony. Agony. Agony.

Trying to get my queasiness down so I can try Amerge.

I feel like I need a shot, an injection.

Scarlet ghosts fall from between my legs.

The light screams.

Amerge Day

Monday 7-11-11

10 am
The Head Pain is so Severe I want to cry, or die. Why will no one help me? Period started yesterday, and so today=AGONY. Left side of head had me up a lot of the night. Ice pack. Now it is all left side agony. I want to try my new drug Amerge/naratriptain but I am so queasy. I just want to sleep. So, the icepack. The coke with ice. The pain is off the charts cruel.

Crushing. Crushing.

basilar artery migraines

i learn about these by reading on the internet, web md and mayo clinic etc, they sound very much like my weirdest scariest migraines and maybe if a doctor had ever said they thought that was what my freak awful blacking out stroke episodes were, i might feel better thinking oh at least it has a name


what am i doing with my life? sitting here with an ice pack on my head researching head pain and considering what medication to take
what are you doing with your life?

school supplies

a lovely homecoming to NJ late Friday night

though i have a strange night/another sleep like seizure and walking into hall in dark, runnng away, dizzy, hot


Saturday brunch of fresh sweet corn crepes at the In Between'

a lovely day and an evening walk beneath the moon at the ocean with orange chocolate icecream cones

on the drive home a silver fox raced across in front of us

sunday morning=today. period starts, a bearable day with just ibuprofen but then at night i go to bed, (even drugging self with a little benadryl so i will sleep)

i wake up within two hours, very sweaty, with head pain

the head pain is all left sided

last month the pain moved left, after being in right since the Fall, and what does that mean? why has it migrated all to the left side?
is it contagious? migratory? spreading?
it is bacteria? fungus? parasite?

it is pinched nerves?

is the right side just too burned out to feel much right now?

well i have still had right sided pain and crackling but this left sided thing is the thud heavy painful migraine thing

so it is 3:40 am and i am up icing the left side of my head

this post is called school supplies because i want my life back
and at Target all the school supplies have come in, and I get so excited, like Fall is another Spring, and someday I will be well enough to teach and learn, to be teacher and student

7-10-11

the blood draw that wasn't

7-6-11

I tried. I slept. I ate. I drank. I meditated. I went there.
I told myself a story of how I wanted the results and this was the way to get them, for someone to extract my blood and read it like a story.

And then the very nice phlebotomist said she hoped I had a big vein and she showed me an entire sheet of labels of all the tests that needed to be run and I asked her to count how many vials that was and when she got to 11 oe 13 and they were not little lavender tops but like large tubes, I simply shook my head. No way.

This has been a year of dreadful blood draws.
I am exhausted, anemic, bruised, and traumatized.

Back to the drawing board. I will have to ask Dr. Taylor to prioritize them and break them down into 2 or 3 lab visits.

I know most of them are either for lupus or the entire stroke panel portion of the lab requisition. She did say if they came back positive she would be sending me on to the rheumatologist.

I need a vacation though. Since I was 14 they have been looking for a diagnosis. 27 years of tests. I really can't do anymore. If I ever even get a diagnosis I think at this date I would hardly be able to stand a treatment if it involved a needle, pill, or loud machine.

the MRI

Was so very happy to have made it through another head/neck MRI today because as I told the tech, "I am so claustrophobic now I got claustrophobic in a movie theater this week." She said someone came in and told her he was so claustrophobic he couldn't put on a band-aid.

I hear you!

And I am so grateful to Bree and Michelle and the front desk woman who helped me through it. Also all my friends and family and doctors and nurses and spirit helpers. I think even of my cats and dog and trees and music.

And then I also visit outer space and far galaxies.
And also the aboriginal people in the dream time.

They were painting my body with speckles.
Then the rains came.

We danced and leapt like frogs.

Then someone was saying sunshine sunshine sunshine sunshine over and over.

I stayed as very still as I could. They said they got good images.
I am relieved. Grateful. Whew.

And I think I could in the future help others with their phobias, as I have so been there.

Later in the day I ran into Lake Whatcom with my little friend June. What a joy!