Migraines

I saw the neurologist yesterday, about my migraines. This particular doctor is one of those rarities who will explain things to his patients, thoroughly, till all their questions are answered. And he asks questions of the patients, lots of them. And does physical checks to assess pain. 

He's a gem.

He's one of the leading scientists in his field, having helped develop or oversee the development of (I forget which) at least one highly effective medication for migraines.

A bigwig. And a gem.

Being thorough often means your appointment runs late, but this one is worth waiting for.

I saw him first around 15 years ago when migraines had become so problematic for me that my ability to function was being impacted on an almost daily basis. I had one type of treatment then, and for about a decade I then only experienced migraines about twice a year.

Then they recently flared up again, more than 10 in a month on average, so I looked him up again and waited out the delay for getting an appointment, and boy, am I ever glad I did!

I learned more about migraines in my appointment yesterday, information that has helped me understand some of the puzzle pieces of my life.

I brought Hubby into the interview with me this time, and Doc immediately began addressing him. (Later on, Hubby and I discussed this, and we came to the conclusion that most husbands think their wives are simply nuts or trying to get out of making supper when they complain of migraines. This isn't the case with Hubby or Boyfriend, but it did underscore the fact that migraines have been largely misunderstood for a long time.)

Surprising facts about migraines:

1. They're a genetic defect in the (insert terribly technical term here) largest nerve in the human body.
2. The WHO (World Health Organization) has placed them 9th on the list of incapacitating diseases.
3. A migraine is a storm in the brain that goes on for days. Sort of like a smaller version of Jupiter's big Red Spot. And pain is the last symptom to appear. When the pain hits, the storm has been running for three days in the brain already.

Doc went on to illustrate to Hubby and me the difference between our brains. He took out a pen with the nib retracted and began to scribble wildly on the surface of the desk, which made an annoying small noise. He said that, were he to continue making this noise for an hour, Hubby's brain would eventually become habituated to the sound, and he would be able to "tune in out."

Not so with the migraine sufferer's brain. We never become habituated to the stimulus. The sound is as annoying twenty seconds in as twenty minutes or twenty hours.

This information came as a revelation to me, one of those blasts-from-heaven kinds of revelations. It explained so many things about my reactions in one fell swoop, it was like being hit by the proverbial lightning bolt!

"…never become habituated to the stimulus…" Wow - does that ever explain me! For starters, it explains why, years ago, when we had a Media Centre where I worked and we had specific times during the day when we were serving customers, I was unable to ignore people when it was someone else's time to serve the counter. I could HEAR them waiting. I could hear them coming down the hallway, putting their books down, taking off their coats...and I used to think my co-workers were deaf, daft, or just plain lazy and incompetent for not getting up right away to serve people. I used to get pretty steamed at them. It did not make for a harmonious working relationship. My longsuffering Boss used to tell me, repeatedly, to just ignore it and let the people who were supposed to be serving them do so, and just get on with the workorders I was working on.

But I couldn't! I couldn't let it go, and it always seemed an eternity to me till someone would get up.

But it wasn't an eternity. It was my brain on migraines. It was a hyper sensitivity to stimulus. I could no more ignore the fact that there were people waiting at the counter than I could ignore a screaming baby or my own limbs being cut off with a chainsaw.

And it wasn't my fault.

That's a biggie, because all these years I've been blaming myself for being stupid, or easily distracted, or hot-under-the-collar over this issue. I have been busy chastising myself for my inability to do what I was told - namely, getting on with my work and letting someone else help the clients.

And now I understand that I couldn't help it. That's it's a genetic defect in a major nerve of the brain. That once the nerve gets jangling, there is nothing I could do to stop it, and a few days later there would be a migraine as a result. 

I now understand that my colleagues weren't necessarily stupid or lazy or inconsiderate. 

They were habituated. They were able to tune out sounds they heard as "background noise."

For me, there is no such thing as "background noise." I've always had a hard time with the radio playing in the car, with people trying to hold conversations while the tv was on.

Because I can't tune it out! Now, I've known for a long time that I can't do that, but now I know WHY!

It's also why I never let Daughter talk on the phone to her friends when Star Trek was on. Why music playing in a kid's room, or a kid talking on a cell phone, would drive me nuts. Because I simply can't tune it out. Ever.

It may sound like a small thing, but this understanding comes for me as a huge relief. All these years I thought I was just disagreeable, just ornery. "Affectations!" Hubby used to tease me. "Selective hearing!" I used to snap back. I used to wonder what was wrong with him, he'd have a radio on in every room of the house, all tuned to different stations, and the tv on as well. He wasn't "listening" to any of it, and meanwhile my brain was fighting to make sense of all of, all at once.

And once that nerve started jangling, there was no stopping it.

Well, that's it for today's rant. I hope I haven't bored you with my fascination on this subject. I'm going to mull this one over for a long time.

But I do recommend to any migraine sufferers out there that you skip the over-the-counter meds and the GPs and head to a neurologist. Mine's got 3,000 patients, but these guys to to school for a reason, and specialize for a reason. 

I'm just so glad there are specialists out there that we can, eventually, get to see.

Getting Water from a Stone

We recently had Mother's Day. For years, my Mother's Day celebrations were a bit unusual, compared to other people's.

There was my "real" Mom, Patricia, who gave birth to me, and from whose arms I was wrested at the tender age of five years old. From age five to about 14, it was made my "duty" to call my mother on Mother's Day, and on her birthday, and on Christmas and Easter, etc etc. My phone calls were carefully overheard. I had to tell my mother I loved her, and I dutifully did so.

What I wasn't allowed to say was how desperately I loved her and missed her, and how my soul had died inside from the lack of her, and how I couldn't feel anything because of my painful separation from her, and how I had shoved all my love, all my feelings, deep down inside me in order to follow the rules, so that I might, for a few minutes each year, hear her voice, and maybe be allowed to see her.

That situation crippled me for life. Oh yes, I have learned to cope. I have even come to terms with what people did, and understood why they did it. And I have got on with my life, learning to love once again.

But my relationships have all been screwed, and it is hard work for me to become "normal," and it's an ongoing struggle.

Albeit one I am grateful for. At least I DID reunite with my mother, and I DID come to know her a bit, and though I had developed a habit of not listening to anyone, I was eventually able to hear her advice, even though she might not have lived long enough to know that.

Moving on...

I had also to wish my Grandma a happy Mother's Day. Grandma wanted everyone to think I was her daughter, not her granddaughter. I dutifully told her I loved her, when beneath that I hated her for removing me from my mother. And beneath that, I loved her for making sure I was kept in contact, a very distant and infrequent contact, but she did make sure I kept in contact with my mother.

And beneath that, I love her because she was my Grandma.

Then my father remarried, and I was told to love my new Stepmother, which I did. Not much choice in anything in my early years! Minnie won my heart on her own terms, first with her cream-cheese-and-cherry-pie, after which I felt she could do no wrong. And later, with her questions about feelings, questions I had never heard before because my father and grandparents didn't want to know the truth. Questions I didn't understand at the time, because I had sequestered my feelings somewhere where even I didn't know they were. But questions which nevertheless came back to me when I was old enough to start dealing with all the s**t that had befallen me.

Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, Easter, birthdays...they were all spent with people who loved me, who I loved, and all of them were spent apart from the people I loved.

Then I became a mother myself. I was still not "fixed" from the injuries of my youth, but my Daughter dragged me up above water, just by existing. Ever so slowly, I began to learn what love was really about - how you can't really help yourself, how there is no way to ignore this other being. We think it's the infants that are helpless. No, it's the mothers - we can't help ourselves where our young are concerned.

And we usually go on to make a bunch of mistakes regarding our offspring. Some people are too indulgent. Some too strict. We spend an awful lot of time worrying about them, and not enough time enjoying them.

It's my Daughter who has taught me the most about a Mother's love, and she who has motivated me to do countless things I would never have considered.

This morning, it's the protein or vitamin shake I'm having for breakfast. I wouldn't say it's delicious - there's no where NEAR enough sugar in it for that! But it's blueberries and chocolate almond milk and real cranberry juice and green powder. It makes my Daughter happy to think I'm drinking this stuff, and it beats making breakfast.

But it got me thinking as I was using the hand blender to mix it all up, who came up with the idea to get milk from almonds? Almonds, in my experience, have very little liquid in them. It certainly wouldn't have occurred to me to try to produce any large amounts of liquid from them!

This is quite an age we live in. We have surpassed our own ability to comprehend our world. We now have so much information we don't know how to process it. We can make such technological gadgets that revolutionize how we do things, that anybody over 15 can't take it all in. Our ability to understand our own lives decreases exponentially with each decade we claim in our lives.

Life is as confusing and bewildering for most of us over 50 as it was to me, as a little girl, not understanding how I could make things work to my advantage, ie, how to get my mommy back.

But if we can get milk from almonds, we may yet one day get water, or blood, from stones.