He knows. (And no, I have no idea how.)

My beloved DH baffles me sometimes.

Let's be honest, men and women are baffled by one another, most of the time.  Men?  Completely incomprehensible.  I mean, really.  But I know that they're just as confused by us.

DH was on a little business trip.  Someplace in that middle distance of "too close to fly to" and "takes all damn day to drive there".   He called me, to let me know approximately when he would be home.  It went something like this.

(telephone rings)

Me:  XYZR, this is Lucy.

DH: Hi hon, its me.

Me: Hello darling.

DH: What are you doing?

Me: Working, dear. (This is my answer every time he calls me at work.  You called me at work.  WTH do you think I'm doing?)

DH: You sound like you have a headache.

Me: !!!

Me: Yes, I do.  I have no idea how you know that, but yeah, I do.  It is bad.  I have an appointment with Joe later this afternoon.  I'm hoping he can fix it.

DH: That's not good, you've been getting a lot of those lately.

Me: (whispering now, because even this mundane conversation is making my head pound) I know.  Its been fun.

Anyway, he got home safe and sound (not that I expected otherwise) and I went to see Joe.  Joe is the massotherapist, to quote the rock band Heart, "he's a magic man!"  But not like that, get your mind outta the gutter!  Joe worked on my neck and shoulder muscles, working out some of the kinks that may or may not be causing the headaches, but even if they're not causing the migraines, they certainly aren't helping to ease it with as tense as they are.

I digress.

How the bloody hell does DH know I've got another one of the blankety-blank headaches from two sentences?  Beats me.  I wasn't whispering, or making "ow, it hurts" noises, he could just tell from the way I answered the phone.  The man knows me well.  And is a complete mystery to me!

WTH Moments

I'm having problems with migraines again.

I am really tired of it, too.

I started getting headaches when I was about 10 years old, and complaining about them landed me at the eye doctor's.  I remember being terrified that I needed glasses; I was enough of a social outcast without them, I didn't want to contemplate how much worse it would be with them.

At the time, though, I did not need the glasses that I now wear; my diminishing eyesight is due to the fact that I am getting older, nearly everyone sees some diminishment in their eyesight as time goes on.  

That's not the problem.  The glasses are not causing the headaches.  

The problem is that I don't know what's causing them.  They're increasing in frequency and severity, exponentially.  If they were pain in one particular spot, over and over, I'd be far more concerned that they were indicative of a specific problem, but they're not.  The pain is on the right side of my head.  No, the left.  No, behind my right eye.  No, at the base of my skull.  No, like a ring around the crown of my head.  Wait, what day is it?

Work is stressful, here and there, but not really at a level that I think should be causing this much pain.  It is a slow time of the year for me, so the pressure I'm feeling for upcoming "stuff"is self-inflicted.  I think that it goes without saying that I'm not giving myself migraines.  Or at least, I don't think I am.

The worst part of this is that I can't fix it.  Taking analgesics doesn't really help much, they diminish the pain that comes with the headaches, but the painkillers don't kill 'em off.  I have tried everything.  Freaking EVERYTHING.  Tylenol.  Motrin.  Advil.  Aleve.  Excedrin.  Lavender everything, teas, rubs, baths, soaks.  Tried to get more and better sleep, thinking that might be a factor; used Valerian root, melatonin, chamomile, Ambien, and every over the counter sleep aid available.

Huh.  In this listmaking, as I'm trying to figure out what is new and different, what has changed recently, it occurs to me that there is something I haven't been doing that is normally part of my routine; I haven't been at the gym, on the treadmill, the elliptical, or at my yoga classes for a few weeks.  The yoga classes are in the middle of the day, and as of late, I've been too busy to get to them.  Ugh.  Could be that's the problem right there.

ye-ouch

Migraine.

Even the word makes me wince.

I've had troubles with headaches since I was roughly 10 years old, when complaining about them scored me a trip to the eye doctor's to check and see if poor vision was the cause of the headaches. I still remember sitting in a darkened hallway after they'd put those horrible drops in your eyes that force your eyes to dilate so that they can look for.....what, exactly? No idea. I also remember being terrified that I'd leave the eye doctor's with glasses; as far as I was concerned, it was bad enough that I was one of the "smart" kids, adding glasses would just further deteriorate my social standing in a typically horrifying time period in any kid's life: middle school.

Nothing was wrong with my eyes back then. I told the adults in my world that, but we checked with the eye doc just to be sure. I can tell you now that I was one very tense little kid. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well in school, and worried excessively about all kinds of things. I've never really lost that anxiety; only for brief periods of time have I lived without it.

Research I've done as an adult has taught me a few things about my headaches. While I do get migraines from time to time, my usual garden-variety headaches are of three basic types. Tension headaches, caused by stress. Weather-related, when a large low-pressure system moves through my area, I get a headache. I've no explanation for that one. Finally, the last bunch are related to my menstrual cycle. TMI, I know, I know. But those are caused by hormonal shifts. All of them tend to be 'cluster' headaches, which means that they're re-occurring, lasting several days. They also have 'rebound' characteristics, which means that they come back after medication wears off, often worse than before analgesics were taken.

I refuse to take a prescription for them. Dr. H, the family doc, gave me samples of Imitrex and Relpax a few years ago to try for the headaches; Imitrex made me feel like a space cadet. The headache disappeared, sure, but the side effects! Among a bunch of other really weird things, my skin felt too tight. I've never tried the Relpax for that reason.

I got interested in aromatherapy as a possible solution to the headaches. Lavender and peppermint/spearmint essential oils do help, but don't solve the problem for me. Unfortunately, because I'd love a natural solution to yet another of my problems that doctors don't understand well.

The migraines, when they come, make me sensitive to light and sound, make me nauseous, make me pretty incapable of doing much of anything other than lying down in a dark room. Perhaps the worst part is that the garden variety headaches morph into migraines if I can't get a handle on them. Two days or so with a tension headache spells m-i-g-r-a-i-n-e. Ugh.

The current one is a tension headache. My job is stressing me the hell out, and I'm not dealing well. Would anyone out there like to give me a credit card and pay me to travel for a living? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that'd solve this whole tension/stress lunacy. Just a thought.