You know what's interesting about the word, "chronic?" It's all the time. Not some of the time, not once a year, not once in a lifetime but on a regular basis. You get to experience what "chronic" is. I've never heard anyone say, "I was diagnosed with chronic laughter and I don't know what joke to tell." Or, "I was diagnosed with chronic dancing but there's no one who will be my partner." Chronic is usually connected to some sort of ailment that either hurts or is bothersome to the person in some way. Some have accused me of having chronic cat syndrome but that's for another day because I'm in denial.
This morning I woke up with a migraine, Was is chronic? I don't know, it wasn't wearing a name tag. It feels like your skull is going to pull itself apart, like a melon that gets dropped from a tall building but has no cape. It makes it incredibly hard to get out of bed to get to the pain pill down the long hallway.(Note to self: Move the pain pill closer to the bed with a bottled water.)
Every move you make hurts your head. Every step you take is unbalanced so you hold onto the walls. Your eyes are closed because any kind of light sends a bolt of pain to the back of your head. Every time you think about the relief you HOPE to get is met with the understanding that this time, it might not work.
The first thing I do is head to the bathroom (in case I throw up). That's a side benefit no one tells you about. With the lights off (and this is tricky) I immediately turn on the shower to cool/cold and tilt my head back so that the pine needles of water pelt the ache across my skull. Sometimes it helps to bang your head against the wall but I've been discouraged from doing that. I'm just saying, it's your head, your pain - do what you need to do.
In this case, the shower did not help. Now I am wet and my head is still pounding. I made my way into the kitchen trying to avoid the cat litter on the floor which is now sticking to my wet feet and irks me to no end. I took down the bottle of over the counter medication that most times kicks the migraine in twenty minutes. I swallowed two of them, opened the freezer to grab my frozen sock (homemade) and went back to bed, covering my eyes with the frozen cold. I fell asleep. (A frozen sock is made of a very long tube sock filled with as much rice as it can hold but leave room to tie the knot at the end. DO NOT MICROWAVE. The rice will cook and believe me, the sock cannot be reused).
I walked back down to bed, shook the cat litter from my feet, threw on a nightgown, put the rice sock on my face and fell asleep. When I woke up, the sock was off my face and the cat was laying on it and he, too, brought cat litter into my bed. My head was still pounding hot and the migraine went down only a smidgen (I like that word - smidgen). I decided to take a lot more over the counter pills (because I'm an addict and that's what we do) when the small still voice of God made another suggestion: take a pain pill.
SNAP! I'd forgotten about those. It's a small narcotic that packs a wallop of a punch in a short amount of time. it dissolves in your mouth so the effects are almost instantaneous. The migraine was slowly going away and I was getting dizzy as I was getting ready for church. No matter.
I was feeling woozy and could tell my speech was a little off so I didn't talk to my friend I was bringing with me. My chores for the day got done (sweeping the floor and cleaning out kitty boxes). I was able to hear the sermon, take legible notes, participate in worship and managed to meet and greet people while looking/feeling a little off. It was okay once I explained the migraine. My pastor prayed over me.
I'm very tired now. I had to go grocery shopping but did so quickly because that's another side effect of the medication. My friend and I went to a local farm stand. I'm so grateful for my pastor, my new friends, my old friends, my family and God for modern medicine.
Chronic migraines are just that - chronic. Sometimes I know what causes them and sometimes they come out of the blue. I know the immense amount of stress I've been under contributed to it. I self-injured a lot in my mouth and I didn't eat well. But was that the cause of it? I don't know because I have never been able to establish a pattern but all of the contributors in the cartoon above make perfect sense.
I am a survivor...of many painful things that have happened to my body and those that happen because of my body. But this truth I hold onto with the grip of one swinging from a vine: God is my only source of wellness and it is only in Him that I trust the pain has a reason and will not go to waste.
Amen and amen.
