Ooh... Pretty Shimmering Lights in My Head

Last night was going along quite well until I got out of the shower and noticed that my vision was even stranger than usual... there were shimmering lights everywhere, growing brighter as I watched.

Hmmm... is it my eyes or my brain? Close one eye... flashing away. Close the other eye... yep still there. Must be migraine time. Nothing hurts yet, damn Sparky wants his dinner soon, guess it will be delivery tonight after all. I tend to get migraines during that wonderful PMS time, which I'm sort of in now because I've been screwing around with my birth control pills (didn't want to have headaches during my road trip or the week after with my dad having surgery). I'd take them non-stop, but the doctor bitches about it and I don't want to run out before my 12 months are up. I only go 3 or 4 days off anyway, nothing happens except the damn migraines (I seem to have reached perimenopause).

Luckily I have a large supply of Maxalt tablets, Merck will send them to you free if you don't have insurance and are poor enough, bless their black little pharmaceutical giant hearts. They cost about $16 a pill, so that's one less thing to worry about. I also get my Singulair from them, which retails around $100 a bottle, so two less things. I wish the Ambien people has a patient assistance program (can't sleep... clown will eat me...), that's my only other hovering around $100 a month prescription.

So I took a pill and lay down on the bed till dinner came (Chinese, isn't that a brilliant choice with a migraine!) watching the as the lights went from SpiroGraph frenetics to a tolerable pulsing. The Maxalt makes you kind of woozy by iteslef, and I don't usually even take one till I've been in pain for a day or so already, but the aura or halo lights really freak me out. I've had migraines for years, but this is only like the fourth time I've had the aura warning. Last time was after getting out of the shower also...

So it was sort of a forcibly calm evening for me. I do now believe the vision problem in my right eye (varying degrees of double vision and presbyopia) really is neurological (MS, optic neuritis related) and not as much actually a physical problem (from RK surgery in the 80's to correct my vision) because my vision got noticeably clearer after taking the Maxalt. Still not real good, but not a complete blur like it's been doing lately.

No headache by bedtime. I was going to go over to my parents to help my dad out with his spinal implant remote control (that was the afore-mentioned surgery, more on that to come) today but when I called at 1:30 (had to set an alarm to wake up that early) to see if the rep was still coming at 2:00, my mom told me she was already there, came early, and was almost finished. I lay there a few minutes accessing my situation, felt a pain behind my left eye and decided since I could go back to sleep for a few more hours I may as well take another Maxalt to knock out round two of the migraine.

Several groggy hours later I finally got up, and have been having another quiet evening. Actually made Sparky his spaghetti tonight (I need to go grocery shopping, dammit). I had one of my weird concotions - cranberry chicken salad from Sam's Club, with spring salad mix, strawberries, raspberries and walnuts wrapped in a flour tortilla. I've been on an "everything tastes better in a tortilla" craze lately, I even put my chinese food in there last night (I'm not a big rice fan).

It's time to take another shower before bed and now I have a slight throbbing beginning behind my right eye, hopefully I'll sleep decent tonight and wake up feeling better tomorrow. I don't really want to spend another day in woozy druggy land. I haven't been sleeping worth a damn the last few days, most likely also a hormonal problem. Can we just bring on the menopause and get this whole thing over with? I think the perimenopause thing has been going on about four or five years now. Oh well, I think I'll go test the hot shower theory again now. Vision's still pretty good, maybe I can read for a few minutes before bed too.

Posted by Morticia at August 04, 2005 03:32 AM | TrackBack