I’m running a little late this morning, so this will be short. The rain is still lingering, and so is the migraine that came with it. After I fed Isabella, I crawled back into bed for a little while longer, hoping a bit more sleep might help. It did, at least enough to get moving, though now I’m paying for it by running behind.
At the moment, I’m trying to finish breakfast and savor my morning coffee before I start getting ready for work. Some mornings feel rushed before they even begin, and today is one of those days. Still, I’m hoping for another quiet day at work—nothing too chaotic, just enough calm to get through the lingering headache and the gray skies outside.
Rainy mornings have a way of slowing everything down, including me. Maybe that’s not always a bad thing, even if the clock disagrees.
Some mornings begin with sunshine and energy. Other mornings begin with a pounding head, gray skies, and the realization that the weather forecast was probably trying to warn you all along.
Last night, I went to bed early because of a migraine that had been steadily getting worse since yesterday afternoon. Thankfully, it’s not quite as bad this morning, though it’s still lingering enough to make me feel slow and foggy. It’s one of those headaches where you can function, but you definitely don’t want to do much more than absolutely necessary.
Honestly, I probably should have expected it. We’re supposed to have rain for the next three days, and my body usually seems to know the weather is changing before I even look at the forecast. I’ve often joked that migraines can be more accurate than meteorologists. The pressure changes, the gray skies, the damp heaviness in the air—it all seems to settle right behind my eyes.
Still, the day has to begin whether I feel great or not. Coffee helps a little. Quiet helps more. Hopefully, the rain will do what rain is supposed to do: slow things down, wash the world clean for a bit, and maybe give all of us an excuse to rest when we need it.
For now, I think I’ll take things one step at a time and hope the migraine continues easing instead of digging in for the long haul.
It’s Friday, and I’m back on my regular schedule of working from home. It’s always nice not to have to go anywhere—to relax with a cup of coffee and not worry about rushing to get ready. I can take my time.
I have a few things to do today, but mostly I expect I’ll be preparing for a meeting at the end of the day. I’m not quite sure how I feel about it—somewhere between trepidation, nervousness, and maybe even a little excitement. I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
I actually talked to my doctor about it a bit yesterday. He’s been treating a plantar wart on my foot with cryotherapy. I hate even saying I have a wart, but they’re fairly common—and they can be quite painful, which mine has been. Still, I haven’t really minded the visits, because it gives me a chance to talk with him.
He’s been my doctor since I moved to Vermont, and I feel more at ease with him than with any doctor I’ve had before. He’s always positive and enthusiastic, but also serious and compassionate when it matters. I feel very fortunate to have lucked out with him.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a great day—and a wonderful weekend.
Not quite myself this morning. I woke up feeling off and hoped breakfast might help—it didn’t. If anything, it made the nausea worse, so I went back to bed for a bit.
Now it’s time to get up and face the day. I do have things that need to get done at work, though if I don’t start feeling better, it may end up being a short one.
This is going to be a short post today. My schedule is a bit shuffled this week. I’m working from home today instead of Friday since I need to be at the museum then. I’ll also be working a half day Thursday and another half day on Saturday to prepare for an early morning class next Monday. It’s much easier to set things up when the museum is closed—no worrying about securing objects while moving them around.
It’s probably for the best that today is a work-from-home day. I woke up with a headache, and I don’t think I could handle the bright lights of my office or the mix of perfumes and other scents that come with a full building. Still, there’s plenty to get done, so it’s going to be a busy one regardless.
I slept in a bit this morning—until 5:00 a.m.—which, for me, almost counts as indulgent. The only reason for the extra rest is a slight adjustment to the day. I’m going into work late and will be leaving early for a dental appointment, which means working around the university’s leave policy. Since we now have to take leave in four-hour increments, even a short appointment requires a bit more reshuffling than it used to. There was a time when anything under two hours didn’t require leave at all, but like many things, that has changed.
It’s a small inconvenience in the grand scheme of things—just one of those minor bureaucratic realities that shape the rhythm of a workday. Nothing dramatic, nothing particularly frustrating. Just… different.
And maybe that’s what today feels like overall. Not rushed, not overwhelming—just slightly out of step with the usual routine.
There isn’t much more to say today. Just easing into the week, adjusting where needed, and moving forward.
I woke up this morning not dreading the week… or at least not completely dreading it. That in itself feels like something of a small victory.
I’m not excited about the week ahead—let’s not get carried away—but I’m also not upset about it. Normally, Mondays come with a heavy sense of reluctance, that familiar “here we go again” feeling. Today, though, I’m somewhere in between. Not eager, not annoyed—just… neutral.
And honestly, I’ll take neutral.
Of course, the morning couldn’t be entirely without frustration. As part of my usual routine, I organize my prescriptions for the week on Sunday or Monday morning. I didn’t get to it yesterday, so I tackled it today—and that’s when things went sideways.
I realized I’m out of one of my migraine medications. Somehow, my pharmacy has marked it as inactive (even though I thought I had already filled it), and it looks like another prescription was sent to the wrong pharmacy altogether. To make matters more complicated, the pharmacy has requested new prescriptions for three of my medications from the Headache Clinic—and so far, there’s been no response.
I know there’s been a change in neurologists at the clinic, but still… it’s frustrating. These are the kinds of things that shouldn’t fall through the cracks.
So now I wait. If I haven’t heard anything by noon, I’ll start making phone calls and see if I can untangle the situation myself.
What a way to start the week.
Still, I’m holding on to that sense of neutrality from when I woke up this morning. Maybe this is just a small hiccup, not a sign of how the rest of the week will go. Here’s hoping things smooth out from here.
Sometimes, a week doesn’t have to start perfectly—it just has to start.
Fair warning: today’s post is more medically informative than my usual reflections—it’s still personal, but a bit heavier on the details than you’re accustomed to here, and I suspect this medication may also make me a bit loquacious, as Susan could probably attest after our conversation last night.
It’s not often that I wake up and still feel this sleepy. I have a migraine medication that I rarely take because it can make me drowsy for a couple of days. Most of my other medications work fine, so I tend to avoid the ones that linger like that. I think this morning’s drowsiness is also due to a migraine medication.
At my last appointment at the Headache Clinic, they gave me a new medication to try. It’s one of the newer CGRP medications. I’ve tried several over the years. This one is interesting because it can be used as a rescue drug, though some CGRP medications are used as preventatives.
I take Qulipta daily as a preventative. Ubrelvy, however, is a rescue medication. Most CGRP medications are taken once a month, once every three months, or daily. Ubrelvy isn’t taken that way. It’s meant to be taken at the first sign of a migraine—usually an aura.
Auras look different for everyone, but they’re a signal that a migraine attack is imminent. For me, my auras are small twinkling lights that float in my vision. They aren’t dramatic, and they rarely last more than a few seconds—never more than 30 seconds. I don’t always see an aura before a migraine, but if I do see one, I will get a migraine.
So instead of taking it at the beginning of the headache itself, as with most triptans, Ubrelvy is taken when the aura appears.
Yesterday, I saw an aura and took a dose of Ubrelvy. I never developed the migraine. That alone feels like a victory.
Ubrelvy has three potential—though still somewhat rare—side effects: nausea, sleepiness, and fatigue. Most people experience side effects within 30 minutes to an hour after taking a medication. However, because of my liver issues, medications can take longer to become effective or for side effects to appear. Some medicines, including Ubrelvy, are metabolized in the liver. When liver function is compromised, metabolism can slow down, which can delay both effectiveness and side effects.
That seems to be what happened with this dose.
About three to four hours after seeing the aura and taking the medication, I became very drowsy and fell asleep in the middle of reading a book. It took me a bit to fully wake up, but once I did, I seemed fine. Then last night, the drowsiness hit again. I fell asleep early and slept through the night—even through Isabella’s usual insistence on being fed.
I woke up at 4:00 a.m. when she made her presence known, but I went back to sleep. When I woke again around 4:30, I checked the time and made myself get up, feed her, and put on some coffee.
I’m awake now, but I could very easily lie back down and fall asleep again—even after being up for an hour.
I’m hoping this doesn’t last all day. I’ll drink my coffee, watch the news, and take a shower—all of which should help me wake up more fully. I was out of work Monday with a migraine, off yesterday, and I have an important meeting at 9:00 a.m., so I really need to be at work today. If this drowsiness continues, it may not be a full workday—but hopefully I’ll shake it off and get through.
I’ll likely make a strong cup of tea when I get to work this morning.
For now, though, I’m moving slowly and hoping the fog lifts soon.
To make up for how boring this post may have been, here’s Isabella’s Pic of the Week (with a little bit of me thrown in the mix):
In 1735, Benjamin Franklin wrote in Poor Richard’s Almanack:
“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
One thing I know for sure—he wasn’t correct about the “wealthy” part. And I’m not entirely convinced about the “healthy” and “wise” either.
Last night, I had one of the worst migraines I’ve had in a while. It had been building all day and finally came to a crescendo around 7:30 p.m. By 8:00, after taking my migraine medicine, I was asleep. That part, at least, would have made Mr. Franklin proud.
I woke up around 11:30 p.m.—thankfully without the migraine—but it took me over an hour to fall back to sleep. In fact, I was awake enough to finish reading a novella I’d started the day before. There’s something oddly satisfying about finishing a book in the quiet middle of the night, when the world feels paused and suspended.
Once I finished the novella, I did what many men do when they can’t sleep and nearly dozed off watching a particularly unexciting video that should have been stimulating but instead worked better than melatonin. I was awake just long enough to turn everything off and slip into dreamland.
You’d think falling asleep during that type of video might lead to some interesting dreams—perhaps something that wood be pleasant—but no such luck. The dreams were as boring as the video. In one, I was in the middle of a very colorful parade reminiscent of a Pride parade. Only it wasn’t a celebration—it was a protest. I never discovered what we were protesting, even though dream-me kept trying to find out. The other dream was so unremarkable that I can’t even remember what it was about.
I suspect the second dream was interrupted by Isabella wanting to be fed at 3:45 a.m. I successfully fended her off for about thirty minutes before surrendering. At that hour, resistance is futile.
Now I’m writing this post with a slight headache lingering, contemplating whether I should just go back to bed.
I’m technically off work today because of a scheduling error I made and decided not to correct. Officially, I’m “at a doctor’s appointment at Dartmouth.” It had originally been a Botox appointment until they shortened the interval between shots from twelve weeks to ten. Since I do actually have a headache, the sick leave for the first part of the day still applies. I was planning to take vacation time this afternoon anyway.
So here I am—early to bed, early to rise—and not feeling especially healthy, not remotely wealthy, and certainly not particularly wise.
Perhaps Mr. Franklin should have added a footnote:
“Results may vary. Especially for those with migraines, midnight reading habits, and insistent cats.”
Joe
The Closet Professor 