What a Headache!

Yesterday toward the latter part of the morning, I came down with one of my wondrous, legendary headaches. At first I hoped it wasn't going to get worse: vain hope! So I did the only thing I realistically could. I canceled out of my afternoon commitments, got down what lunch I could with my headache-related nausea, and went back to bed. Spent the afternoon just lying there, with a damp washcloth over my eyes.

I've had these headaches ever since I was a kid. For more than forty years now. It's always on the same side of my head— always on the right side. When I get a headache, it feels like the right side of my head is lifting right off into the air. At its worst, it feels like railroad spikes being driven into the fissures on the right side of my skull.

And there's also often a sense of nausea that goes along with it. With a stripe of nausea running down the right-hand side of my throat.

I've never had it checked out (some other time we'll get into the disconnect between me and doctors) but it sounds like a migraine to me.

Actually, yesterday I was lucky. Usually when I get a headache, I wake up with it in the morning, and it hangs on for most or all of the day. Yesterday, like I said, it didn't overtake me until the latter part of the morning. And it let up by late afternoon, so that I was able to attend a committee meeting in the evening.

Though I was quite spaced out at that meeting. Feeling all spacey, loose, lassid, drifting. A rather pleasant feeling, actually, almost like being on something, this odd spaced-out mode that I often drift into in the aftermath of a headache. Though it's hardly worth going through all the pain to get there.

Aspirin, which is so effective for my other aches and pains, doesn't do a thing for my headaches. Nor any other pain reliever. Though extra strength Alka Seltzer will sometimes help somewhat with the nausea.

My headaches were at their worst back when I was in my twenties and thirties. Used to get them several times a month, and they were much more severe, too. Nowadays they strike only about once a month if I'm lucky, and the pain, though it's bad enough, doesn't begin to compare to the transports of agony of twenty years ago.

Oh well. At least I don't have to punch a time clock. Certain items on my schedule are penciled in on my calendar; as for the rest, as long as I get it done, I can do it at my own pace, and at a time of my own choosing.

And this morning I'm still feeling a bit spacey and loose and strung out. Fortunately, today looks like a not terribly hectic day. Busy enough, yes. But not hectic.