Pain in the Head

The past two weeks have been very violent, weather-wise.  I’m sure most of you have heard about the weather systems pouring through Wisconsin.  Tazz and I were at a waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells area when the first system of the week+ period of tornados and rain came through.  We ended up getting home okay that night but saw many funnel clouds and dodged lots of lightning and rain.  The area is flooded but luckily our house has been spared, for now, and the basement is dry.

The weather systems have been playing hell with my migraines, too.  I’ve been using abortive drugs more than normal and I think it’s been killing my stomach too.  Sigh, woe is me.  I’m not to a point where I even want to consider going back onto antiseizure medications, but if my stomach is getting nailed, I bet my liver isn’t liking it.  My doctor is finally getting me off of beta blockers by decreasing the dose.  I forgot to refill the lower dose and today I’m going through, for a lack of a better term, withdrawal.  My heart rate is usually pretty low, around 60bpm, with the beta blocker and with it being higher I feel weird.  Stupid me for forgetting to get the pills earlier.

In any case, school will be over in a little over a month.  Tazz and I are going to be driving out to Niagara Falls in August and camping in July and September.  I’m hoping the mosquitos aren’t horrible in July!!

Looks like my RSS feed at http://www.artin.org/blog/wp-rss.php wasn’t working.  You may have found posts from the past month or so went missing.  The problem is fixed now - Wordpress has a bug in it and I was able to patch it.

This has been a really bad afternoon for my head.  Whenever I get a migraine on the right side of my head, it’s usually a shit storm for my brain.  Today, is no different.  Around 3pm I noticed I was getting a headache.  Since it wasn’t in my left temple, I figured it was a standard headache.  Dumb decision to ignore it.

After the heating and cooling guy stopped by to replace the dead fan in our air conditioner, it hit me pretty bad.  I took some Excedrin only to realize that it was a little too late.  I couldn’t find any Ibuprofen either - a 500 count bottle doesn’t last long in this house.

After we ate dinner and watched a little tv, I told Tazz I needed to crawl into bed and sleep for a while.  An hour later, I feel like complete shit and am trying to work myself out of the hangover.  I’m hoping a little bit of fresh sourdough bread and chai tea will brighten my mood.

I finally went back to my doctor and talked to him about the current medications I am on.  I’ve been trying to lose weight over the years and even the modest amount of activity fails to show results.  Reading up on beta blockers (I’m on Toprol XL) I found out that because they keep your heart rate low, it can interfere with aerobic exercise.  Not getting above a certain bpm prevents my body from burning the fat like it should.  Funny huh - I’m on beta blockers because I have high blood pressure and the best way to drop that is to lose weight.  Can’t lose weight if the meds prevent it…

Tazz and I also went camping two weeks ago and it was a lot of fun.  The weather was decent and the headaches kept themselves to a minimum.  We’ve already planned another weekend trip in July and September, camping in local areas.  I found that being away from technology and being active kept my mind off of the headaches.  Sometimes I wonder if they’re self-induced anyway!

I started this post early this morning and am now finishing it up before I leave from work.  Since I left during lunch to take a walk around downtown, I’ve had a wicked headache.  Caffeine, Ibuprofen, and now Naproxen isn’t even touching it.  I’m thankful that I’m leaving work soon because this one is kicking my ass right now.

I’m trying to figure out what exactly I need to do to keep myself from having pain when I vacation.  This weekend we’re going camping and while I’ve been spending time getting the camping gear together, I need to make sure I bring a kit in case the ice pick shows up in my head.  I’ve had relatively good luck with the migraines lately but I know I have to prepare for the worst.

Part of the problem with being on vacation and having migraines is you never know what could happen.  If you’re traveling with one person or ten people, you kind of feel like you have an obligation to not “ruin it” for the other people.  I plan on keeping a good stock of my abortive drugs on hand and not getting myself wrapped up in the triggers like alcohol.  I don’t want to be a stick in the mud either but I will stay aware of how I’m reacting.

I know that most people that know I have migraines are understanding if there is a problem when we’re out having fun.  I still feel it’s my responsibility to keep the party going, however.  I probably got that from my mom who wouldn’t tell you if her arthritic joints were locking up if it meant going home.

So simply be aware of what’s going on around you and don’t be afraid to tell people you have boundaries.  Most of the time they’ll understand, and you know what if they don’t, screw ‘em.  I’ve been out at a club/bar too often having to suck it up to keep the night going.  I also didn’t know where I should have stopped.  Don’t feel afraid ordering the bottled water or going with the bland salad if it’s going to keep you migraine free for the night.

Camping shouldn’t be a problem but in August we’re driving out to Niagara Falls and that could be interesting.  Hopefully the temps stay down so I don’t get overexerted.  Nothing like being hot, crabby, and migrainy to ruin a time that’s supposed to be fun.

School is finally over for the spring semester and I have some “between time” until summer session starts next week.  Since this past weekend and I Tazz have:

• Got the garage resided (well, we watched)
• Refreshed the flower beds out front & planted pretty things (they haven’t been used for three years easily)
• Fixed the garage spot light (me on a ladder & electrical wire)
• Removed the 30 year old non-functioning fluorescent lights from the garage
• Put a new, efficient fluorescent fixture in the garage
• Mowed the lawn
• Pulled the weeds/creeping charlie
• Emptied and removed the scary barrel (more later on this)

Whew that’s a lot.  And there is still more to do.  I’ve noticed over the past few years that we’ve let things slide around the outside of the house and a number of things inside too.  I keep a to-do list of household repairs, etc on tadalist.com and it hasn’t changed in a long time.  School is the primary reason but I think, in general, I just gravitate towards lazy.  I’m hoping this motivation sticks with me through the summer!

The scary barrel mentioned above is actually a 50-ish gallon barrel that has been hidden behind our garage since we bought the house in 2001.  The previous owners said they had no idea what was in it so they left it.  Tazz and I were actually afraid to know what was in there until in approximately 2004, I opened it.  It took a lot of effort since it was sealed pretty heavily.  What I found was a bunch of stale water, a wrench, an oil filter, and about 8 quarts of used, degrading motor oil.  The smell was that of a sewer.  I didn’t know what to do with this and neither of our cars at the time would let me safely transport it to a hazardous waste site.  So it’s sat back there, like a nagging blemish.  Sometimes I swear it was calling to me in the night.

I finally came up with an idea on how to get rid of it.  I ended up buying two 5-gallon buckets from the hardware store and carefully emptied the stinky, migraine-inducing contents into the two buckets.  Come to find out the idiot put holes in the barrel up the side and it’s been leaking oil on the ground for years.  Anyway, I got the oil/water/wrench mixture out and have let the barrel dry out.  There is a little bit of oil left but now it can be thrown out.  Now we have two pretty buckets full of gunk.  I wonder how many years they’ll sit in the garage?