Migraines Medication and Emotion

Just back from two lost days. Thursday I spent with flu like symptoms and thrashing about and trying every chair, sofa, bed in the house.

The flu triggered a migraine, the first migraine I'd had in years. The last one was when we still lived in the Opat house in the far corner of town. That one was ended with a strong shot of some sedative. But I hadn't been doing the things that lead to dehydration. This time I was severely dehydrated as well as in intense pain.

We are so fortunate in our little town to have an excellent little hospital to care for exactly these kinds of problems. We went into emergency room on Thursday evening and Dr. Loder got me started with rehydration and pain relief. We finally got the pain under control on late Friday night.

By Saturday morning I was ready to go home. The thing about my migraines is that they are triggered by smells. Even when migraine free I have to avoid the laundry detergent aisles at Target and our local grocery store. So, by Saturday morning I was at the point of saying, “Everything in this hospital smells.” (I also got home and opened the fridge and smelt a dish going moldy that Kris hadn't noticed). Everyone who works in the hospital wants to smell nice, so they wear deodorant. Everyone has to keep themselves germ free, so they use, in every room, hand sanitizer. There's soap and laundry detergent smells. I couldn't escape from the smell. Every smell was a little spike in the pain that remained.

I got home. It's pretty well smell free – or the smells are so familiar that they don't bother. Kris had put together all the stuff I'd thrashed apart and told me I hadn't done as much damage as I thought I had. Bless her for that. It was so good to have the house looking so nice.

I ended up bawling. I cried about and lamented how old and sick and vulnerable I felt. I'm still liable to start crying over minor things. I'm hugging the stuffed Krismutt I threw to the floor in my thrashing.

That leaves me wondering about the relationship between chemicals and emotions. I know that there are studies showing that there are relationships, but I'm not enough of a scholar to know what they are. I suspect that the extreme nature of today's emotions has to do with the drugs I've been taking and the illnesses I'm going thru. I'm glad to feel the feelings I've got, but I need to remember that some of them are medicine driven.

And I need to allow the lost days to be lost. I'm not going to get back either of them. Hopefully the coming chemo won't cost me too many more lost days in the first six months of 2012.

Guess I'm well on the way to meeting my deductible for 2012. Wonder what these two days in our local shop is going to cost.

This journey is taking twists and turns I'd never expected. I guess that's what life gives you – rarely a direct route from start to finish.