Sunday, March 17, 2019

Could This Be It?

Friday was the Ides of March. When the 15th of a month rolls around, I usually scramble to the phone to refill my Zomig.
But this time, I didn't. I didn't even check the refill date until the day after. Sure enough, the official "you can refill this now" date was the 15th as usual. Want to know how many triptans I had left?
3. I have 3 left from my last refill.
To be clear, February was a particularly nasty month of migraine. It's of course Anniversary Month around here. More than our share of grief in that shortest month. Then the weather patterns kept swinging hard from warmish to below freezing and back again. We had storms over and over and over. I truly hated checking the weather report because it just looked like pain on my screen. I had come home on Valentine's Day with a migraine. I had taken two already that week and really didn't want to take more lest I be punished by the dreaded medication overuse gods.
After refilling my script and getting 6 more shiny pills in the unforgiving blister pack of frustration, we had some hellacious extreme weather.
I tried. I really tried not to take more than 2 that week. When your insurance limits how many you can have, you must ration your triptans, especially when insurance knocks you from 9 to 6 per month without warning or explanation.
But I caved. I took three in the week following the refill because every time I thought the agony was gone, it came raging back.  I'd missed 2.5 days of work. It was a terrible month, and I was desperate.
Then, I got my first CGRP injection. I went with Ajovy.
The week after the injection, I noticed that the pain would come. But then it would go. It was rarely overwhelming pain. Sometimes the pain was clearly coming from my sore neck, so I took Tylenol. And that was enough.
Tylenol hasn't been enough for years.
I checked my migraine app and it confirmed that my pain and migraine days were both considerably less than the two weeks prior to the injection. 
Is it truly possible that I've finally found that "Hot New Thing" that puts a stop to this train wreck?
No more elimination diets. No more eyeing food with trepidation. No more dread when I look at the weather forecast. No more prepping every night before leaving work just in case I need a sub. No more pain 18 of 30 days stolen. Is it really as easy as one injection a month?
I still have the color blobs, occasional sparkles, blurred spots, wiggly spots, and vertigo mind you. But I had those first before the pain.
Pain. No more pain. It's a kind of surreal idea. Almost disquieting. There's that unease about allowing myself to enjoy this only to have it ripped away. Where is that proverbial shoe and when will it drop?
I guess I should be optimistic, but cautious as well. After all, the Lamictal took away my pain for a month, but then it came back. I guess I'll know more when April 15th rolls around. Will I still have 3 triptans? Will they be the same 3 from this month?
Who knows? But spring starts this week. Spring is renewal and new life. A break in the bleak harshness that is winter here. I keep trying to call the CGRP Avjoy. Maybe there's a reason for that. It's a little injection of joy just in time for spring.

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