I have migraines. They're pretty frequent; I usually have two or three a month. Since I lost my insurance, I haven't been to see a neurologist, but I've been doing alright and managing them with dark rooms, soft piano music, cold wet washcloths, and crying in my bed.
Tuesday I was babysitting for my good friend Tara. I looked outside and when I looked away from the bright sunny day, my right eye refused to focus and I lost peripheral vision in it. The best way to describe it is when you get your picture taken and the camera flash blinds you for a few moments, except this didn't go away for hours.
After a few minutes I found myself sufficiently freaked out. I did a little research and asked a group of people online about it and they urged me to get to the ER because partial blindness in one eye with lots of squiggles and blurry things is a symptom of retinal detachment. So, after getting worried, I called Tara to see if someone could come get her daughter. She hurried home and drove me up to St. Edwards, and being a super awesome friend, she stuck around for about two hours waiting with me until my parents got there. Another hour or so and a migraine flare up later, I finally got into a room.
They checked my eye, took some blood, made me pee in a cup (which they didn't even test!) and then sent me down for a head CT. A few episodes of Law and Order, and then a few of Enterprise after my mom went to get food, and a nurse came in and gave me a nice morphine shot in the butt. After my mom got back, they also gave me a nice soothing Ativan.
All that worrying and waiting and making my friend leave work, and it was just a new and exciting symptom of migraines. I'd never had an aura before my migraines, but they're pretty common with other people.
The morphine and ativan put me to sleep pretty quick after I got home, and when I woke up and looked at the clock, I got annoyed because it was only an hour later than when I went to sleep. And then I looked at the day, and realized I'd slept for about 25 hours.
The doc gave me a prescription for hydrocodone and when my head started hurting again, I look one. It didn't do anything so, I took two at the next appointed time since the bottle said 1 to 2 pills.
I'm still hurting some, but everything is real shiny and distracting. I keep looking at things and forgetting to look away. I got a plate out of the cabinet to make something to eat and I freaked out because the plate was being loud.
Now, I've never been high or drunk before. I'm a pretty straight-laced kind of person. I drink and get tipsy, but I've never been drunk, partially because of my extremely high tolerance. But I've never taken any sort of drugs before and this is pretty much the strangest thing I've ever felt. Letters look weird.
My teeth feel funny. And I really like dogs because when you spill sour cream on the floor because you can't tell where the counter is, they'll lick it up for you, because the ground is really far down there and it's scary. I've never been more grateful for spellcheck in my life.
I am very amused at this post right now but I think I won't be later.
So 23 years ago today, my mom was pushing a fur covered blob of fat out of her banjingo. While I was the smallest of her three, pound wise, I was a bunch of little rolls of fat and I was covered in hair. From my eyebrows up, and all the way down the back of my neck.
