Migraine

Like a malevolent vine, the migraine spreads through my head, its thorny tendrils shooting blossoms of excruciating pain; an aura of light explodes, rendering images into half-completed jigsaw puzzles as the thorn digs deeper into my right eye, leaving only an awareness of an agony that seems as unendurable as it is incomprehensible. I reach for the over-the-counter pain reliever, knowing full well that it won't beat back the monster raging inside my head, that only time time and sleep can do that. I reach for the PM pain reliever, intent on taking far more than the recommended dosage but figuring, what the hell, anything has to be better than this pain, anything, including dying. I take the risk. I pop the pills. With a little luck, the pain-induced nausea won't bring them back up. I lie there, waiting for sleep, for death, for release. I wait.
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It is hard to explain the impact of a full-fledged migraine to one who hasn't experienced it. When the first prism of light begins to blot out the lower half of your vision--the television screen that you're watching, the face of your friend on the other side of the table, the road ahead of the car that you are driving--there is a panicky sense of onrushing horror. Migraine sufferers are aware of what they're in for, and it is a fearsome realization, knowing the extent to which this locomotive of pain has the ability to incapacitate them.

There are medications now, where before, when in the grips of a migraine, a person might have to be rushed to the nearest emergency room to receive a shot of some strong narcotic that would obliterate all consciousness. Today's medicines seem to work for some people, not so well for others. The key, of course, is catching the headache at its inception, and having the medicine on hand to take immediately. That can be tricky. I know people who have one or more migraine headaches a week (I can't imagine living with that!), so they would probably be the most logical candidates for keeping handy doses of the medicine. However, I now tend to have groups of 2-3 migraines every couple of years (a vast improvement from their regularity during my childhood, but still...) so I don't run around with migraine relief tablets in my medicine cabinet or in the glove compartment of my car. I tried that but they get old after about a year, and their potency markedly deteriorates. When I finally did need the stuff, the pills were, basically, ineffectual and I threw them out, along with most of the breakfast I'd eaten that morning.

According to myth and legend (and no small speculation), migraine sufferers tend to be highly creative and intense individuals. Maybe that's true, but I've known a few folks who suffered throughout their lives, and if there was a creative or intense bone in their bodies, they were brilliant at hiding it. But maybe that's where the creativity and/or intensity came in. Maybe they just kept it bottled up (a surefire recipe, according to my mother, for any number of health disasters). In recent years, there have been no shortage of other suspects posited as the culprit responsible for migraines, ranging from food allergies to eye problems, and it's likely that there's a number of interacting factors rather than just one, single agent of despair and dysfunction. I've had them during the culmination of a great deal of stress, following periods of sleeplessness, after periods of too much sleep, and when consuming certain types of pasta sauce. I've also had them when working at my computer terminal. So, myself, I could give a shit what causes them, I only want NOT to have them anymore.
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I was, roughly, 7 or 8, when I had my first migraine, and they continued to occur several times a year throughout my childhood and adolescence. In those days, the migraines were terrifying ordeals, not just for myself but for my poor parents, who were forced to deal with a stealthy, violent enemy who crept up, as unexpected and unwelcome as a home invader, taking possession of their only son and turning him into a crying, moaning, sometimes screaming invalid who was temporarily stripped of even the ability to communicate intelligibly. Sometimes they would last for a night, sometimes for two or three days. A treat for no one, the migraine is a trial for everyone concerned.

By the time I graduated from high school, both the frequency and the duration of the headaches seemed to be on the wane. After a couple of years in college, they suddenly stopped altogether, a cause for rejoicing, albeit with one eye looking over my shoulder.

Sure enough, about ten years later, like an evil genie, the migraine returned. It came on a day when an unusual winter storm found me shoveling snow from the driveway of a house in Oklahoma City that I was sharing with a good friend. It might have been the glint of the sun as it echoed off the surface of the white brilliance of snowfall. Maybe my eye caught it just right as I scooped shovelfulls of the frosty mess from the driveway. Whatever the case, the migraine was back, and although his visits are much less frequent than before, he still comes around every couple of years, usually with a succession of three quick visits before departing for other climes, biding his time before some unknown factor bids his return. Maybe he's mellowing somewhat; he certainly doesn't seem as fierce or as frightening as he once did. I can live with him now, during his little stopovers, and I haven't had to be injected with narcotic pain relievers since I was in my teens, so that's something. Still, if the migraine never came back, I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't miss him. He's about gone now, this headache that I've had for the past couple of days, the one that followed me through a long night at the Atlanta Airport, and reached fruition on the morning after my return to Ft. Lauderdale. This was my first migraine since July of 2006, when he accompanied me to the Pride Festival on the streets in Wilton Manors. I don't let him cripple me anymore, and if I'm screaming these days, I'm more likely yelling obscenities at my unwanted guest, rather than crying out in fear and pain. For some perverse reason, it makes me feel better to express anger at this nasty interloper.

If my personal history is any indication, this is the first of three visits I'll receive from the migraine. There should be two more within the next month or so. I'm expecting it now, so I'll be ready. If it, for whatever reason, fails to arrive, I won't be disappointed. But, just in case, I've got one eye looking over my shoulder.