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 |  is paved with good intentions... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Hi, I'm Elle. I'm based in Auckland, New Zealand. I'm the mother of two young adults, the wife of an entrepreneurial gamer and the Queen of Unfinished Projects. This blog will contain poems, short stories, possibly photos and book reviews if you're lucky, and my thoughts on a variety of topics. Hope you enjoy it. |
Caitie had a friend (Toni) come to stay after school on Friday night. That was fine, no dramas. I took them both to Armageddon on Saturday. They disappeared very quickly. I took some photos (no decent ones really  ) and then came home, and we returned hours later to pick up the girls who seemed to have had a great day.On Sunday we drove the girls to Waipu, where Toni's mother was staying with her boyfriend. Gorgeous place. Not so much the building itself which seemed fairly average, but lovely rural setting, with a small lake (which I suspect is actually a dam for the farm) that the girls went rowing on while Steve had a cup of tea and we talked with the adults and some friends of theirs that were visiting. The male friend was hilarious. Classic 'small town country guy' I thought. He had a kind of mullet, and he sprawled in his chair with his beer like he couldn't be more laid back if he tried. And he kind of mumbled, and his fiance (they're getting married next weekend in what sounds like a classic barn raising kind of shindig) kept telling him off for language and stories (he was telling us about how male goats pee on their own faces). So funny. We were talking (because the kids went for a swim) about how important it is for kids to learn to swim in a country like New Zealand, and I mentioned that we learned in the school pool and at Lake Tomarata. And the guy said "Tomarata Lake? You must be a Mangawhai girl!" "Well, I'm actually a Tomarata girl but no one has usually heard of Tomarata..." "I live in Mangawhai." Ahhhh... He'd only been there for 13 years though, so I didn't even bother with the 'So do you know....' or 'Have you heard of...'. I've been out of Mangawhai's social group longer than he's been in it. It was funny though. On the way home (it's at least a two hour drive each way, and longer on a public holiday weekend) I started getting tired and achy. My neck was quite sore. When we got home, we just pottered on our computers. Monday I had a runny nose and sneezes, and still achy and tired. Felt like I was coming down with the flu, but no nausea, and the runny nose was really mild. I did manage to capture some utterlly gorgeous photos of some baby silvereye birds in the feijoa tree next to the house. So cute! Tuesday I stayed from work. Very much fatigued with muscle aches. Just walking up or down the single flight of stairs was draining, and I usually jog up them. I took the opportunity to do some scanning of my memorabilia with the Photomyne app that my sister introduced me to, but literally standing on my feet for half an hour made me so tired I had to sit down and recover. Like, what the fuck? That's so ridiculous. I went in to work on Wednesday. Still a bit tired and achy, but I thought I should go in. I was having trouble concentrating and thinking clearly, but nothing too major, just a bit like you do when you're tired or brain fatigued. Just after midday, I started getting these flashy lights in my peripheral vision on my left side. So weird. Then I felt really disorientated, and like it was hard to focus my vision. I described it as being 'light headed' at the time, but looking back, that's not really what it was. I think my vision was blurry, and so I was therefore disorientated and struggling to focus. It's hard for me, blurred vision, because my vision is SO bad normally that it's hard to tell what's normal and what's not. That probably sounds weird, but let me try and explain. I can't see without my glasses. My focussing distance is about a handspan in front of my nose and everything beyond that is a serious blur (just blurs of colour mostly). When I'm wearing my glasses, I can see clearly through them, but I still have blurred peripheral vision because my glasses don't cover the entire field of my vision. I don't get the blurred peripheral vision with contact lenses, because they cover my entire field of vision. But every now and then the wobble in my eyes (I have nystagmus which means my eyes constantly twitch back and forth, something I refer to as a wobble) gets bad and I can almost see the distortion that the movement of my eyes make. Normally my brain compensates for the wobble so my vision isn't constantly wobbling, but when I'm tired (or have been drinking) sometimes I see it for a few seconds. That's kind of what it was like. So it was kind of like I was looking through my glasses but my vision was as if I wasn't wearing glasses, but not a steady continuous thing, but more like if I just focused hard enough, I'd be able to see. Like I was having to really concentrate on just seeing. So weird. The flashing lights and disorientation freaked me out, and I went down the road to find a doctor, but when I got there I chickened out. I didn't want to see a strange doctor. I called Steve. Not sure what I expected him to do honestly, but he's my go-to guy for reassurance.  He told me to book an appointment with Jason, our regular doctor. So I rang, and they could see me at 4:30pm which was unexpected as they're usually really busy and same-day appointments are hard to get.By this time the flashy lights and disorientation/blurred vision had gone. I thought the walk in the fresh air (we still had lingering effects in the office from the SkyCity convention centre fire last week) had done the trick, but apparently they normally only last about half an hour, so it was probably just coincidental timing. I was starting to get a headache though, and I remember saying at my desk "Man, my head is killing me." I meant to leave about 3pm but had to get a payment authorised before I went, so it ended up being about 3:30pm. By the time the train arrived at Swanson, it was 4:30pm and I knew I was late for my appointment. I tried to ring the doctors to let them know but got voicemail. I called an uber, and it dithered around near me for about 10 minutes but never turned up, then it cancelled on me. Bastard! I tried to ring the doctors again, and got voicemail again. I called another uber, and this one arrived. I got to the doctors at 5pm, and Steve had beaten me there. They accepted my apologies and told me if I waited they'd be able to see me eventually. Jason asked me a bunch of questions and then did some tests on me. One was to see if it was a pressure headache (I had to bend over and stand back up to see if the movement made a difference, which it usually does with a sinus headache) because I explained that it was the same kind of feeling - like a sense of pressure in my forehead and behind my eyes. But it was quite one-sided. And weirdly, it was on my right, whereas the flashy lights had been only on my left. The other tests I recognised as testing for a stroke. I had to smile, frown, lift both arms to shoulder height, touch my nose and then his finger with my finger, repeat for the other hand, and close my eyes while he touched my face to see if I had any loss of sensation. He asked if we had any family history of migraines and if I'd had them before. I said I wasn't aware of any family history, and I'd had bad headaches before, but hadn't called them migraines. Didn't migraines make you throw up from the pain, and last for days and weren't treatable with over-the-counter medication? Mine weren't like that. He told me it was a 'migraine with aura'. Well alright then. The headache wasn't so very bad though, which was weird. He gave me some Rizatriptan to deal with the headache. He gave me enough that I'll be able to use them if I get any more. He also told me to get my eyes checked in case eye strain was contributing. He said the smoke issues in the office from the fire could have been a contributing factor, but we'll never know, and it's also possible that I had a mild virus over the weekend or that it was all a big lead-up to the migraine. I went home and went to bed and read for a while, then ate dinner, then back to bed. At this point I couldn't really read anymore, so I listened to an audio book for a while, then gave up and just had some quiet music playing at a very low volume and just lay there in the dark in a sort of dozing state until Steve came to bed, at which point I went to sleep. This morning, me being me, I immediately googled migraine with aura and migraines in general. So interesting! About 15% of people suffer from migraines and it usually runs in families. Apparently if you're prone to migraines you should ensure that your air quality is good, so that does make me wonder if the smokiness in the office contributed. The 'aura', which is the flashy lights and blurred vision I had, is rarer. Only one-third of migraine suffers have that. So one third of 15% means only 5% of people have migraines with aura? I had the weirdest sensation of deja vu when I was reading about the auras. I'm sure I've looked that up before, especially the line 'Occasionally, an aura can occur with little or no headache following it.' But I searched my journal and I can't find any reference to it. Although apparently I use the word 'headache' a lot in my poetry. Aura can include tingling and as soon as I read that, I thought 'Oh, I had that too' but I couldn't tell you now if it was in my hands or my face. I think I was too distracted by the flashy lights.And then there's the fact that I only had the flashy lights in my left eye, not both eyes. That may mean that it was a 'retinal migraine' and caused by the eyes rather than the brain. I couldn't tell you if the blurriness was in both eyes or one. Retinal migraines are even rarer, and only 1 in 200 migraine sufferers will have a retinal migraine. So that's, what, half a percent of migraine sufferers? So half a percent of 15%? Aw, I'm special. Apparently women are more prone to migraines than men, especially after puberty, and as you get older, they are more likely, until menopause when they generally go away. My elderly neighbour Colleen suffers from migraines. She had one earlier this year that they thought was a stroke, but turned out to be a migraine. Apparently menstruation cycles affect them, and I was told that taking the Rizatriptan with estrogen-based contraceptives could lead to a stroke. Thankfully I don't use any estrogen-based contraceptives. Weird that you don't usually get migraines when pregnant or after menopause though. Clearly something to do with hormones, huh? Apparently if you're prone to them, they get worse during menopause before going away (in most cases) after menopause. Ugh. For retinal migraines, apparently 'there are no triggers that are specific to a retinal migraine, but the following factors can trigger a regular migraine: - emotional stress, tension, and being overtired - sensitivity to ingredients in specific foods - too much caffeine or caffeine withdrawal (I have been caffeine-free for years if you exclude chocolate!) - bright lights or loud noises - changes in sleep pattern - hormonal changes in women - medications that lead to swelling in blood vessels (I don't take any medications normally) - excessive or regular use of pain relievers for headaches (I rarely take painkillers) - not eating or drinking enough Some people have a higher risk of a retinal migraine than others, including: - people under the age of 40 years (only just! I'm 40 next March) - individuals with a personal or family history of migraines - people who have another condition, such as atherosclerosis, epilepsy, lupus, or sickle cell disease (nope) Retinal migraines also affect women more often than men. Apparently you don't use triptans to treat a retinal migraine though, and I feel like the Rizatriptan I used yesterday helped, so maybe it was just a regular migraine with aura? *shrugs* 'For example if you look through the right eye and close the left eye, you see twinkling lights but when you look through the left eye and close the right eye your vision is normal. In migraine with typical aura, when you alternate which eye you look through the visual disturbance will be seen with either eye but possibly more prominent with one eye or the other.' If it happens again, I'll have to check that. It could be that I was seeing it to the left but out of both eyes? I asked my family if they were aware of any history of migraines and both Mum and Dad said no, but both my sisters said they often get headaches which cause them to go to bed early. I found a thing on Wikipedia which tells you how to differentiate a headache from a migraine: The diagnosis of migraine without aura, according to the International Headache Society, can be made according to the following criteria, the "5, 4, 3, 2, 1 criteria":  Five or more attacks—for migraine with aura, two attacks are sufficient for diagnosis. Four hours to three days in duration Two or more of the following:- Unilateral (affecting half the head) - Pulsating - Moderate or severe pain intensity - Worsened by or causing avoidance of routine physical activity One or more of the following:- Nausea and/or vomiting; - Sensitivity to both light (photophobia) and sound (phonophobia) If someone experiences two of the following: photophobia, nausea, or inability to work or study for a day, the diagnosis is more likely. In those with four out of five of the following: pulsating headache, duration of 4–72 hours, pain on one side of the head, nausea, or symptoms that interfere with the person's life, the probability that this is a migraine is 92%. In those with fewer than three of these symptoms the probability is 17%. So I was thinking about the bad headaches I get sometimes. Yes, they usually last four hours or more (but not more than a day). Yes, they're often on one side of my head and almost always pulsating. I have a high pain tolerance, so I would say most of mine are 'moderate' but occasionally I get a really bad one. I hadn't noticed the physical activity aspect, but since I usually retreat to bedroom, I guess I avoid physical activity. I don't usually get the nausea and never vomiting, but I definitely get sensitivity to both light and sound. That's why I retreat to my bedroom, because kids are so fucking noisy! So I usually hide in my bedroom with the lights off. I don't usually have any inability to work for a day, but maybe that's due more to my high pain tolerance than anything. Who knows? It sounds like I've definitely been having migraines though. I just assumed that migraines lasted days and so mine were just bad headaches. So there you go! My sisters are going to try and take note of their symptoms next time and see if they're having migraines or just headaches. I think mine are easier to diagnose because a) I don't drink much alcohol so I don't have hangovers and b) I often describe them to Steve so I'm more aware of the symptoms. When I have a headache, I often ask Steve to rest his hand on my forehead (something that over the years of our relationship has become known as 'stoshing') and he'll sometimes say 'Is it pulsing? Because I feel like I can feel it pulsing." And I'll say yeah. And also I'll be aware that it's on one side, because I'll be saying "No, move your hand to this side", sort of thing. So I think that's why it's easier for me to look back and be able to tick off things on that list. Tension headaches are on both sides and not pounding, apparently. I've had those before, but my headaches are usually pounding or pulsating, whatever word you want to use. I stayed home from work today as my doctor suggested, even though I could have gone in. I still have a headache, which is the first time I think I've been aware of a headache lasting longer than a day. Although technically it didn't start until yesterday afternoon so hasn't been 24 hours, but they usually disappear overnight when I sleep. I was supposed to be going to the Xero roadshow today, which was a series of seminars and things about the Xero accounting software we use, and I can imagine that being noisy and I just don't think I'm up to that. I could have gone in and worked at my desk, but decided to play it safe. That whole flashy light thing really threw me yesterday. Wikipedia tells me that people who work with a migraine are a third less productive. Ha, I believe that and am surprised it's not more. Apparently migraine with aura and strokes present quite similarly. You can have difficulty speaking and ringing in the ears as well as the disturbed vision. Apparently the key difference is that a migraine with aura has positive symptoms (you feel or see additional sensations like the flashy lights, tingling, etc) whereas a stroke has negative symptoms (you lose sight or sensations, such as vision loss, numbness). That's why my doctor made me do all the stroke tests. I had no numbness and I don't think the blurry eyesight was vision loss per se. It looks like the vision loss you get with a stroke is more of a dark spot in your vision, rather than the blurriness I had, but don't quote me on that. Migraines with aura appear to be a risk factor for ischemic stroke doubling the risk. Being a young adult, being female, using hormonal birth control, and smoking further increases this risk. Well, fucking good job I don't smoke then! And maybe good job I'm probably considered middle aged rather than a young adult these days? I don't like the idea that I'm at increased risk of strokes though. Ugh.Wait a second. Apparently there's such a thing as abdominal migraines.  'The diagnosis of abdominal migraines is controversial. Some evidence indicates that recurrent episodes of abdominal pain in the absence of a headache may be a type of migraine or are at least a precursor to migraines. These episodes of pain may or may not follow a migraine-like prodrome and typically last minutes to hours. They often occur in those with either a personal or family history of typical migraines.'  Woah. That would explain so much! Like, why I keep having abdominal pain and the doctors say there's nothing wrong. Fuck you, doctors! Next time I'm going to see if the abdominal pain comes before a headache. Sounds like the frequency with which I get them is very low compared to most. I probably get one every few months. Apparently frequent is more than twice a week. And to be chronic, you have to have them for more than 15 days a month or lasting more than three months! Holy shit, that's what I'd call a migraine! No thankyouverymuch! Interestingly, Botox has been shown to help chronic migraines. Weird!So yeah, have learned a lot about migraines today. Now that I know all the info, I'll be able to recognise them more easily. The 'prodrome' or the precursor to the migraine is the trickiest bit. It includes yawning, which I did a lot of from Sunday-Tuesday but I also do when I'm feeling carsick. Irritability is another one. And considering they can follow changes in your menstrual cycle, I'm not sure that's helpful. Fatigue and muscle stiffness especially in the neck and shoulders. That's what I had Sunday-Tuesday too. Food cravings. Hmm... I'd love to use that as an excuse as to why my diet fled out the window after only a week of being on it (we're removing white carbs from our diet) but somehow I think it would be exactly that - an excuse!  Trouble concentrating or expressing yourself - I had this too. Steve and I refer to this as being 'brain dead' and he gets it when he's worked himself too hard. I was definitely having this on Wednesday morning because I remember saying 'Sorry, I'm a bit brain dead' because I couldn't think of the word I wanted or how to phrase what I wanted to say, and I know I did this Sunday-Tuesday with Steve.I'll try to make a note in my journal of future migraines so I can recognise frequency and any patterns. Will be interesting, although I confess that I'm not actually looking forward to the headaches themselves! |
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