It's all about me

Well, today I woke up with a wicked headache - I get them occasionally and, being a frustrated doctor, naturopath, homeopath or herbalist (depending on the year), I always self diagnose. If I am feeling optimistic, the headache, as painful as it is and as regular the onslaught, I determine it must be a migraine. When more melancholic, I figure its probably a brain tumour that will get me in the end. When being analytical, I am positive it is an aneurism, seeing that both my maternal grandfather and uncle were plagued by them.

I've had them off and on since 1989. I remember vividly the first one I had - it woke me up out of a dead sleep with intense pain. I was terrified - pale, alternately throwing up and having diarhea, I would've gone to ER if I hadn't been in such pain that I couldn't bear the thought of going anywhere. I suspect that onset was due to hormones, since I was perimenopausal at the time.

Since then, I have developed a strategy to outwit the headache, thanks in large part to my friend Anne, who, a sufferer of migraines herself, gave me the first truly meaningful explanation of them. The short version - people predisposed to migraines have blood vessels that, after stress induced constriction, do not return to their full, normal diameter. Long periods of stress result in the blood vessels becoming so narrow that the brain feels shortchanged in the blood department and sends an SOS to the arterial blood vessels who in response open wide, all of a sudden. However, no one told the veins, responsible for draining blood from the head, and besides they have to wend their way through the tensed up muscles of the neck. So the whoosh of blood to the head without an equal egress, ends up being a migraine.

Armed with this explanation, I now have a strategy - when I wake up with a whopper I:

1. down either aspirin or ibuprofen (acetominophen does not work as it is not an anti-inflammatory) and hope I don't throw it up again (it doesn't always take away the headache, but it usually will dull it),
   
2. drag myself to the couch, prop myself into a sitting position (gravity helps the veins empty the head),
3. place a heat pack on my neck to losen and relax the neck muscles,
   
4. put a cold compress on the painful site (always my left temple), and
   
5. do my best to not resist the pain. Resisting pain only intensifies it.

Sometimes this strategy will get me back to normal within a few hours. Sometimes it doesn't. Today, it worked alright. I'm up at the computer, but the headache is still there, subdued by the aspirin, but still annoyed.