I woke up this morning feeling better. Thank goodness because I have things I have to do at work today. It doesn’t mean my headache is gone, I’m feeling the effects of a postdrome or migraine “hangover,” which is an apt description of how I feel once the worst of my migraines ease. I’m usually achy, mentally foggy, and physically drained. I wish I could just go to bed and be able to fully recover from my migraine, but, as I said, it’s not possible with what I have to do at work today. Most of what I have to do is this morning, so if I still don’t feel well, I could possibly take the afternoon off. We’ll see.
With temperatures plunging from 63 degrees yesterday to 26 degrees today as a storm front moves through, it was no surprise for me that I developed a migraine last night and that said migraine is still with me this morning. I had really bad photophobia last night, and it’s not much better this morning, so thankfully, it is raining so the sun won’t be out and it should be a full gray day. It’s strange: the rain caused my migraine, but I’m thankful for the rain because it will keep it from being a bright, sunshiny day. It’s definitely a catch-22.
Thank goodness I didn’t have to even contemplate going to work today. I developed a migraine not too long after I got to work yesterday, and it was a bad one. I ended up going home after only being at work for three hours. I knew there were three things at the museum that would have only made my migraine worse: 1) 🖥️ I think my computer screen was trying to kill me (even though I have it on the lowest brightness, it still aggravates my migraine), 2) 🔨 one of my coworkers was installing an exhibit and was hammering in shelves so every time I heard the hammer come down, my headache nearly exploded, and 3) 🙄 another coworker said something about one of our other coworkers, and I started to roll my eyes, but I couldn’t because it hurt too much with my migraine centered in my left eye. I end up rolling my eyes a lot at work these days, and I could tell that the day would be filled with more eye rolling than usual.
Anyway, I woke up to the same migraine. Today is a vacation day for me, so I was hoping to feel better. Although my weather app says we will be cloudy all day, our local meteorologist said that we’d actually have sun most of the day. I was hoping to be able to get outside some today and enjoy the sun. However, my migraines always come with really bad photophobia, so at this point, I’m hoping for the cloudy day.
Every three months, I get Botox for my migraines. My latest appointment is today. I never look forward to getting the injections, but I do look forward for the results. Typically, Botox is injected into muscles of the forehead, scalp, neck and shoulders. It’s not that pleasant of a procedure, but it usually takes about five minutes.
Exactly why Botox works is not known, but it’s believed that the injected Botox is absorbed by pain receptors in the muscles’ nerves. The medication then deactivates those pain receptors and blocks pain signals that the nerves send to the brain, that’s why the procedure is officially known as denervation. Those nerves in the head that cause migraine pain are basically turned off for a period of time.
Migraine pain does not go away permanently, however. After several months, the nerves sprout new pain fibers, and the headaches tend to return. The Botox effect usually lasts about 2½ months, which is why I’ve had an increase in migraines for the past two or so weeks. Some migraine specialists will give the Botox injection every 2-2½ months, but my neurologist does not do this because eventually, the bodies immune system adapts to the Botox and makes the procedure ineffective. By keeping it to 3 months, they are prolonging the long term effectiveness of the Botox.
The injections are mostly not that painful, just a quick prick, except for those in the back of the head, those hurt a lot because they are given closest to the occipital nerve. However, the injections become more painful over time. As the nerves sprout new pain fibers, they become more sensitive each time they come back. This makes the procedure more painful each time it’s performed. No matter how much it hurts for the five minutes of the procedure, it’s worth it for the lessening of the migraine pain for most of the 3 months until the next set of injections.
I stayed inside all weekend, just me and Isabella. From Friday night through all day Saturday, we got about 15 inches or so of snow. I wasn’t going to go anywhere. The weather can sometimes be strange in Vermont. We haven’t had a lot of snow this winter, but now that it’s officially spring, we got our only major snowstorm of the year. Then, it was sunny, without a cloud in the sky yesterday. Today, it’s 10 degrees outside as I write this, however, by midafternoon today, we are expected to reach temperatures in the low 40s. With this type of weather, it’s no wonder that I’ve had sinus issues all weekend and still this morning. My nose feels like it’s on fire and my sinus cavities feel like they could explode at any minute. Hopefully, it will get better as the day goes on.
Migraines have their say By Teri Ellen Cross Davis
Whitney cottage, Hermitage Artist Retreat
You could write about the windows all nine of them. You could write about
the gulf, red tide strangling Florida’s shore, the opaque eyes of dead fish
caught in the algal bloom. You could write about the sky—long as a yawn, sky blue
chasing cerulean away, stretched wisps of white determined to be the canvas
for another sunset showstopper. But the body has its own narrative in mind. Neurons hustling
pain blank out any page. No writing can be done when an electric snare corrals the brain. No ear
searching for song while one temple pulses an arrhythmic lament. Mercifully there’s triptan,
a black curtain over this inflammatory act. Strike through today, uncap the pen again tomorrow.
About this Poem
“I was diagnosed with migraines at thirteen. Before the breakthrough of triptans for treatment, I had to lie down for roughly three days in darkness with an ice pack. Now, with medication, when a migraine arrives, I only lose half a day to a full day to the pain. To have a migraine while attending an artist’s retreat felt like a special kind of theft of the time I had arranged away from work and family. I wanted to capture the tension between the migraine’s will and my own, how I sought to find inspiration in a darker moment.”—Teri Ellen Cross Davis
I have my first appointment with a new provider at the Headache Clinic this morning, so I thought this poem would be appropriate. I miss my former provider. She and I had a good relationship, and she seem to really understand my migraines. She listened, talked about stress and outside influences that were affecting the frequency of my migraines, and was not afraid to have me try new treatments. I thanked her one time for never giving up on trying to relieve my chronic migraines. She said that migraine treatments were a lot of trial and error. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. It was all about finding the right combination. I really hate that she moved away, and I have been without a provider there since October.
I hope I like this new provider. I like the two nurse practitioners who have been administrating my Botox treatments, and I hope I will be able to say the same for this new provider. I seem to have finally found a treatment plan that is working fairly well, so I hope I’m kept on the same regimen as I have been on for the past six months. The Botox plus the Qulipta seem to be help as a daily preventive medication and Anaprox, naratriptan, and/or hydroxyzine (the combination changes according to the severity of the migraine) usually help for acute/abortive treatments of individual migraines.
About the Poet
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is a Black American poet and the author of a more perfect Union (Mad Creek Books, 2021), winner of the Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, and Haint (Gival Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She was a Cave Canem Fellow and currently works for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
I was scrolling through Twitter (I have a hard time calling it X) when I came across a tweet by @itsjustdovglad that described what it was like to have a chronic illness. He had fibromyalgia, which is a chronic illness that my mother also had, but as you know if you regularly read this blog, I have chronic migraines. It’s often hard to describe what it’s like to be in constant and never ending pain, but the description below sums it up pretty well:
Chronic Illness – What you should know
Inside every chronically ill person is a healthy person wondering what on earth happened to them. We struggle to do the very simplest daily tasks and feel guilty that most of what needs doing won’t even get started. We are not faking it or being lazy; often we make ourselves worse by trying to hide our illness and carry on with life pretending we are healthy. Just because we did something yesterday doesn’t mean that we’ll be able to manage it today. The likelihood is, we pushed ourselves more than we should have and it will take us days, maybe weeks, to recover. The question “How are you feeling?” is the most difficult question for us as we can’t remember what it feels to be ‘normal’ and not in pain. It hurts more than you can imagine to have to say no to the things we want to do but can’t manage because of our illness. We do things at pain levels others wouldn’t even consider moving at because if we don’t we won’t have a life.
I’ve never come across a more accurate description of what it’s like. This describes my chronic migraines so well. People with chronic illnesses may be in constant pain, but we go on with life because we have to or else it wouldn’t be worth living if we only focused on the pain and let it beat us.
Currently, I feel very fortunate that my current treatments (Qulipta and Botox along with other medications for my trigeminal neuralgia) are working to reduce my migraines and the pain associated with it, but I know all too well how that can change at any time. For now though, I am very thankful that I have days without migraines. I have some days when the migraines are sudden, sharp, and severe, but also brief, lasting only a few minutes at a time. I still have migraine days, when I wake up with a migraine and go to sleep at night with the same migraine that has been with me all day. Some days, though migraines can last several days in a row before there is some relief.
It can be difficult to keep on keeping on, but I am thankful that I now have more days without pain than with pain. Before this last Botox treatment, I had migraines 30 out of 30 days a month. Now, that has reduced to about 10 out of 30 days. For me, that’s a significant improvement.
I worked from home yesterday. Usually, I work from home on Fridays but last week and this week, we are having visitors to the museum that I have to be there to meet with. It will be another long Friday because I am taking our guest to dinner Friday night. Luckily, there are no major tasks to be done today or tomorrow. I have a meeting this morning and am meeting with a photographer this afternoon for him to take photos of one of our artifacts.
What I’d really like to do today is stay in bed and either read or lay in the dark. Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I started seeing an aura, a reliable sign that a migraine is coming. Since the second round of Botox injections, my migraines have been so much better, but nothing is likely to make them go away completely. With seeing the aura last night, it’s no surprise that I have the beginnings of a migraine. It’s been steadily getting worse the longer I’m awake.
If it gets significantly worse, I may not be at work all day, though I hope that doesn’t happen. As much as I’d like to stay home today, I have at least one thing to do today which I need access to my desktop computer for. The other reason I’m hoping it doesn’t get worse is that I really need to go by the grocery store on my way home today. It’s something I’ve been putting off that i should have done over the weekend. Going grocery shopping with a migraine is never a good idea because even with a list, I’ll still forget something in my rush to get in and out of the store.
Anyway, that’s all the babbling stream of consciousness I have for today. Have a great day, everyone!
As we are about to enter February, the days are getting noticeably longer. Sunrise this morning was at 7:09 am and today’s sunset finally will be at 5:00 pm. On the winter solstice, sunrise wasn’t until 7:22 am and sunset was 4:15 pm. We still won’t actually see the sun today. It will be another cold, cloudy day. It’s 21 degrees right now, and if all goes as forecasted, we’ll reach above freezing at 34 degrees. We are not expecting to see any sun again until Saturday, but our low also gets down to 13 degrees. And so goes winter in Vermont.
I plan to be at work early today because I’m teaching an 8 am class, and I want to get there early to consult with the professor and also not to feel rushed getting ready for class. The rest of the day should be fairly smooth until my dental appointment this afternoon. No offense to any dentist or dental hygienist (I’m having my teeth cleaned today) out there, but I hate going to the dentist. While seeing the dentist for dental work is never pleasant, I like my dentist, and it’s always a pleasure to chat with him before the torture begins. I am not as enthusiastic about seeing the hygienist. She’s nice (I can’t say that about all the hygienists I’ve known in the past), but like most hygienist I have known, she talks incessantly about my teeth and loves to tell me all the things she thinks I’m doing wrong, even though I’m actually already doing what she suggests.
C’est la vie. At least the days are getting longer.
Today should be a mostly easy day. I’m going into work a little later because I have to go by my doctor’s office to get some blood drawn. My doctor likes to do my blood tests a week before my annual physical so he has the results at my appointment, and we can discuss them. Having my blood drawn is not something I look forward to (who does?), but I especially dread it because most nurses almost always have trouble finding a vein. I always make sure I drink plenty of water the day before and the day of so I’ll be well hydrated. I’m told that makes the blood vessels easier to find. Still, I sometimes get stuck several times or when they put the needle in my arm, they move it around to get the vein they missed when the needle first went in. They always apologize, and I tell them: it’s ok, it seems to always happen, and if I can handle 31 Botox shots for my migraines, I can handle this.
A few years ago when it was suggested that gay men get the monkeypox vaccine, I went to Planned Parenthood, the only place where they were available, and the nurse was shocked that I didn’t even flinch when she gave me the vaccine, and I told her about the Botox. She said, “Well, that would explain it. Most people find this shot pretty painful because it had to go right under the skin and the patient has to be as still as possible to correctly inject the vaccine.” Anyway, I had no problem with it, but it did leave a scar, which was pretty normal for that vaccine. When I went for the second one, they used the other method of injecting it in the back of my arm, and there as no scar that time.
The Closet Professor 