Post-migraine

I used to get stress- and/or sinus-related migraines all the time. Now I get them about four times a year. As a result, I now tend to forget how to recognize them in the early stages.

Last night I was extremely tired at the poker game...so tired that I took at nap on the host's very comfy couch with Tasha the cat. I drove home, bleary and yawning, and went to bed. When I woke up this morning still exhausted, with a splitting headache, chills, and nausea, I realized that the migraine had been starting last night and I'd somehow managed to sleep though it as it advanced to a pretty awful degree. (I usually manage to stop the progression before it gets that bad.)

So I started the day in a hot bath, trying to nibble enough rice that I'd be able to keep down two Tylenol Sinus pills that would start me on the route to recovery. Once the bath had stopped the chills, and I'd taken the Tylenol, I went to bed for five hours, sleeping the semi-hallucinatory sleep I get with a migraine. By 3 p.m., the headache had receded, leaving me hungry and shaky, and rather annoyed because I was still too light-sensitive and tired to go to a friend's birthday kayaking party, which I'd been looking forward to all week. And I had to turn down an invitation for a photography outing at the Puyallup Fair.

But after some protein (my standing post-migraine meal) I put on a hat, went out in the garden, and began slowly to work at gardening tasks, which turned out to be quite restorative. Kaylee, our little striped cat, had guarded me all during the migraine attack, and all three cats came out to join me in the garden as I pruned the overgrowth and staked a few dahlias. Later Zorg and I made a quick run up to Home Depot so I could pick up a gas grill on end-of-season sale to replace the old grill that's slowing losing it.

Now it's 10 p.m. and I'm finally tackling the organizational tasks that had been slated for the morning. I'm going to try to get to bed before midnight and get back onto a normal sleep cycle so I can get to a NIA dance class in the morning.