Migraines Must Die

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a belly dance festival in a small town not far from the Canadian border. It’s a rural community where you would not think to look for a thriving belly dance scene, and yet--there it is. I attended last year as well, but something interfered: a migraine of epic proportions. I vowed that a migraine would not interfere with me participating this year, but apparently the migraine saw that as a challenge...and accepted. I had a migraine for five whole days, three of which were at this festival. Being the stubborn person I am, I stood toe to toe with my migraine and we engaged in a battle of wills. Here are the highlights of that event.

This would have been simpler.

Multiple doses of medication

I went through an entire prescription refill of my medicine. I take Maxalt MLT 10 mg for when I actually have a migraine, which is blissfully less often now that I take a low dose of amlodipine daily. Usually, a dose of Maxalt takes the edge out of the migraine so I can function. I always seem to need a second dose to completely eradicate the pain, but this time around I almost violated the dosing by needing a fourth dose before 24 hours had passed. I didn’t take it mind you; I resorted to time on the sofa with an ice pack at the back of my head. Clearly, the migraine heard my challenge and was hellbent on winning our bout. I actually wound up consuming 2-3 doses a day for five days because the migraine was relentless.

This makes it look way sexier than it was.

Waking up at night

Oh yes. The true fun came with disruptions in my sleep. Sleeping is vital to my overall wellness plan. The insidious migraine knew this and invaded my nocturnal breaks with its crushing power. Therefore, not only was I combating the pain, but I was doing so with limited power reserves. That freaking migraine was really pissing me off, but I refused to let it keep me on the ropes. I did deploy uber shots of caffeine to counter it. The artificial energy kept me running and fighting, but the migraine sensed my weakness and tried to take advantage. I kept hoping to wake up without a migraine, but that didn’t happen until today.

Me day 3 of the migraine. 

Shut your maw

Did you know that excessive yawning is a symptom of migraines? It’s super helpful in social situations to be showing your molars off every few minutes. I do hope the instructors did not take it personally as it was totally not a reflection of my interest or their teaching methods. I yawned so much that  my jaw was sore. Thanks migraine for one of the more overtly obvious and embarrassing symptoms made doubly bad by the lack of sleep you ensured happened.

When a sloth does it, it's cute. When I do it repeatedly, it gets problematic.

Imbalance

This migraine threw everything it could at me including the loss of balance and coordination. The medication leaves me a little floaty for a half hour or so, but the migraine itself gives me periods of time where I lose balance and have to grab something for stability. The medication does not decrease this feeling. Sometimes, it feels like I am about to fall. Other times, it feels like that movie special effect where something in the distance is suddenly on a moving track that zooms toward the screen at warp speed. Just try and belly dance with that going on. It’s glorious fun.

Not exactly like it, but it's just as disorienting.

The light, it burns

Ok, not burns so much as makes the pain worse. It makes me squinty, which is not an attractive look for a dancer. The weather Saturday had cleared and the gorgeous May sunlight streamed in the windows of the senior center where our classes were held. Everywhere I looked, sunlight glared off of linoleum or glinted against stainless steel making me turn my head or even hide strategically behind other people to block the luminosity. I even had to put my phone screen on its lowest setting for brightness because it was too much. This is one of my more consistent migraine symptoms, so I was prepared to defend myself against it.

Enough already!

Here spot, there spot

Oh yes, the colored dots of ominous delight spattered my field of vision at times. I get indigo colored spots fairly regularly, which is usually just annoying, but sometimes it is the harbinger of pain to come. This time, it was just messing with my ability to see. Big purple and blue blotches in my right eye’s field of vision. The occasional white flash like an old fashioned photograph be taken. Sometimes though, it was just a bunch of sparkly twinkles in yellow, orange, and white. Rather like watching small snowflakes in the sunlight only with the dark cloud of excruciating pain looming overhead. When I kept getting the spots, I knew the Maxalt didn’t fully kick the migraine’s ass.

Feature this popping up randomly in your field of vision. In purple. Without the cool car.

Flurry of blurry

It’s a good thing that dancing does not require a lot of reading because the migraine decided my eyes needed to get with the fuzzy. No reading on the phone. No reading the handouts from the instructors. Just don’t even try. It was like a contest--look at the page in my novel and try to get a line in before the eyes blurred things out. I also get blank spots in my vision, which means words disappear occasionally. This one is vexing at work, but at the festival it wasn’t the worst problem. If I was an American Tribal (ATS) dancer instead of American Cabaret, it might be an issue. ATS dancers are in groups and must watch each other for signals of what to do next. Am Cabs from my troupe though are soloists, which means I can improv my way around the migraine’s strategy.

Oh! I'm sorry. Did you want to read that? NO!~Migraine

Unscented everything, please

It’s spring, which means flowers. A lot of women are gathered in a small space, which means fragrances abound. It’s a senior center, which means Renuzits. It’s a death trap of strong smells, which migraine loves. Strong smells actually trigger migraines for me, and this Big Nasty just fed on the awful scents wafting from the outdoors, the bodies, and the outlets. Each whiff sent waves of pain from my right eye through to the back of my skull. Mouth breathing is not attractive, but what else was I to do? I had to try and survive, and a dry mouth was the only way to counteract the scented plugins.

The aisle of evil.

Speak the speech, or not

Yeah, so this migraine made some of my speaking moments a little bit garbled. That happens sometimes with the really Big Nasties. Good thing dancing does not require speaking. However, I was also vending merchandise for my troupe’s costumer, so I needed to have some faculties of speech. Unfortunately, I had to limit some of my talking (I’m an introvert anyway, so people probably didn’t notice) to others lest I sound like I was drunk or just stupid. Fortunately, I also have a gregarious husband who more than makes up for my reserved verbal interaction.

I hear ya, Goat. 

Stick it in your ear

At one point, the sounds were awful; any slightly loud noise made me grimace. At work, they replaced the usual bell ring with this utterly obnoxious buzzer that apparently can’t be turned down. Every time the buzzer went off Friday, I winced. At the actual workshop, the music with the zurna (think oboe but far more obnoxious in sound) pierced my ear and made me want to scream. Luckily, I also have binaural beats on my phone. I plugged in and tuned out the noise that set my teeth on edge. Take that migraine! You want sound sensitivity, how about some meditative droning noise to counter your wily efforts? I didn’t get to practice a lot for my own performance, but at least I didn’t have to suffer at the sounds of everyone else’s music. By the time I took the zills (finger cymbals) class Sunday morning, my migraine was managed well enough by Maxalt that I could do the zill patterns without agony.

When the sound is just too much to take.

That was my weekend of battling the nemesis of migraine. I refused to concede defeat like I did last year. I have a medication that usually works far more effectively than it did over the five longest days of May I’ve ever endured. However, the Maxalt did let me participate far more than I would have without it. When you have migraines, finding ways to manage the condition and not let it control your life is a never ending struggle. I just found Maxalt MLT last year about this time. I don’t want it to already  be losing its effectiveness. For now, I’ve won. I just hope I can keep the combatant at bay.