Aura
Yesterday, just as I was stepping into the shower, I saw a migraine aura. People who deal with migraine aura experience visual, sensory or motor disturbances just before a migraine attack. This phenomenon usually lasts an hour or less, and symptoms may range from seeing sparks and zigzags to the inability to speak clearly. For me, it is mostly the sparks that I see, and it usually lasts just a few minutes. I don’t always see an aura before a migraine, but a migraine always begins sometime in the next twenty-four hours after the aura appears.
When I was younger, the migraine began almost exactly
When I was younger, the migraine began almost exactly twenty-four hours after I saw an aura. In the last few years, I normally have about thirty minutes to an hour before the migraine sets in. Yesterday’s was a slow progression. It started out mild, so I went to work and tried to work most of the day with my office lights off, but by mid afternoon, that wasn’t working for me anymore. The pain was intensifying and continued to get worse over the course of the evening. Eventually, I just went to bed.
The Boy with Glasses 😲
I had planned to write a different post today, but time kept getting away from me, so I thought I’d post this picture of a group of school boys ogling vintage beefcake physique model Steve Kotis in the 1950s. I usually don’t post vintage pics. BosGuy does a much better job with his Thursday Vintage Gay posts. However, this picture of Steve Cotis just tickled me, because I can (and I bet a lot of you can too) relate to the boy in glasses checking Kotis out. I think we all know what that kid was looking at. It’s just such a great picture in my opinion.
Trial and Error
Yesterday, I had an appointment at the Headache Clinic at Dartmouth. I discussed with my neurologist how this last round of Botox did not seem like it was effective at all. I knew there would come a point when Botox would no longer work, but I expected it to be years down the road, but since I had that abscessed tooth that triggered my trigeminal neuralgia, it hasn’t been able to be as effective as it was when I had the first treatments. My neurologist said that sometimes they have to do a reset on the Botox, i.e. step away from it for a few months and try something different, possibly going back to it in the future. She told me a long time ago that migraine treatments are a lot of trial and error.
For now, she increased the dosage of one of my medicines, and she wants me to try a new treatment called Vyepti. It is CGRP drug along the lines of Emgality or Aimovig, both of which I’ve tried. Emgality was moderately effective and cut my migraine days in half, but my neurologist didn’t think that was effective enough since I basically have daily migraines. When I tried the Aimovig, not only did it not prevent a single migraine, but the side effects were awful. Vyepti is similar to Emgality but not Aimovig. Also, Vyepti has been proven more effective in people who had moderate success with Emgality, plus it has relatively few side effects.
There’s two drawbacks: the method of delivery and expense. The drug can only be given through an IV, which takes about an hour, and it must be done at the hospital. Around here, that can only be done at Dartmouth. While the drug manufacturer has a cost savings program, it’s only for the medicine, not the cost of administering the medication. The Botox cost saving program reimbursed me for all costs associated with the Botox and its administration, which together is over $6600 before insurance. Furthermore, my insurance doesn’t cover this new treatment, but I’m sure they will after my neurologist appeals it. My insurance company denies everything, but Dartmouth has always been successful in their appeals.
The first administration of this new treatment is scheduled for August 1. *Fingers crossed* it works. I’ll let you know.
Two Poems for a Rainy Tuesday in July
Summer Rain
By Amy Lowell – 1874-1925
All night our room was outer-walled with rain.
Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,
And rang like little disks of metal.
Ping!—Ping!—and there was not a pin-point of silence between
them.
The rain rattled and clashed,
And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.
But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-colored
With your brightness,
And the words you whispered to me
Sprang up and flamed—orange torches against the rain.
Torches against the wall of cool, silver rain!
Summer Morn in New Hampshire
By Claude McKay – 1889-1948
All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.
The Poets:
Born in 1874, Amy Lowell was deeply interested in and influenced by the Imagist movement and she received the Pulitzer Prize for her collection What’s O’Clock.
Claude McKay, who was born in Jamaica in 1889, wrote about social and political concerns from his perspective as a black man in the United States, as well as a variety of subjects ranging from his Jamaican homeland to romantic love.
Pic of the Day
Oh beautiful, for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain
These are words from “America the Beautiful” written by Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote the words as a poem originally entitled “Pikes Peak.” It was first published in the Fourth of July 1895 edition of the church periodical, The Congregationalist. It was at that time that the poem was first entitled “America.”
Independence
Two hundred forty-six years ago, the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, adopted the Declaration of Independence declaring the independence of the thirteen American colonies from Great Britain. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step in forming the United States of America. The declaration was signed by fifty-six of America’s Founding Fathers, congressional representatives from New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The Declaration began with these now-famous words:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
Our unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” have come under siege from a far-right, conservative minority led by former president Donald Trump, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Representative Kevin McCarthy along with governors in red states such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, among others. These men and many who follow them are doing their best to take away the rights of women, LGBTQ+ Americans, and voters around the nation. They are being supported by a conservative majority on the Supreme Court (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Roberts). SCOTUS has been emboldened by their majority to begin curbing the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights themselves: freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. They are eroding the rights of due process to push their own warped agenda. Many of these politicians claim to be doing the will of the Founding Fathers, yet they ignore our unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
I asked a friend last week if she had any plans for the Fourth of July, and she said, “I don’t feel like celebrating this country right now.” She has a point. A small number of religious zealots don’t believe in religious freedom, but they believe they can cram their fanaticism down the throats of all Americans. Teachers in Florida aren’t allowed to say gay in the classroom (an oversimplification of the “Don’t Say Gay Law” but as the law came into effect a few days ago, that’s exactly what is happening). Furthermore, anytime conservatives don’t like a news story, they yell, “FAKE NEWS!” and try to suppress the truth, or they just spread their own lies distorting the truth to fit their political agenda. They claim that an insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol was a peaceful assembly while throwing tear gas on people peacefully protesting injustices around the country. The Marshal of the Supreme Court just called for a prohibition on protests in Maryland where many of the Supreme Court justices live. Yet, at the same time, they fight against even the most sensible gun laws in a misguided interpretation of the Second Amendment.
I will remember the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, but I won’t be celebrating this country today. We are moving far away from the ideals of the Founding Fathers and moving closer to a time of fear and hatred. I hope that over the next four years leading up to the semiquincentennial (also called Sestercentennial or Quarter Millennial, a.k.a. the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence) that we can get this country back on the right track and secure our unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
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The Closet Professor 