A Migraine Day

Last night I fell asleep grading. The plan was to wake up early this morning to finish the ten 2-page essays I needed to grade. I woke up and had a migraine. I said, “I’ll hand the essays back Thursday” and went to sleep. I woke up again, when I usually do and took a Midrin, showered, dressed and left, looking pale and tired.

I arrived at school and my pain had not wavered, so I took another Midrin and then warned my class about the side effects and started teaching. I told all three of classes about my situation because I thought that they deserved to know why their teacher couldn’t finish a sentence every once and a while (plus, I was able to imply that even though I was ill and needed to be in bed and taking medication that should have knocked me out by now, I was there seeing to their education, so they need not provide me with excuses when they are ill – I don’t care.)

As soon as my last class was over, I came home and went to bed. I still have a slight headache and am feeling the side effects. Midrin, the only painkiller that has been consistently effective in the 18 years that I’ve had migraines, is a mild sedative, a vascular constrictor, and a pain killer. I think the reason that it works, is because it targets several problems at once. The sedative keeps me from getting stressed out and reduces muscle tension. The vascular constrictor changes my blood flow. The pain killer is basically just Tylenol, and so we all know what it does. The problem is that the sedative makes me tired and the vascular constrictor makes me slightly dizzy. I tend to get dizzy with migraines anyway, so I’m used to that. The tiredness is the side effect I warned my students about.

My biggest problem today though, is that I should have taken 2 pills, followed by one every hour until the pain went away, but I didn’t because I needed to teach. The things I do for my students.

I think that tomorrow I will post more about migraines. It’s something I have a great deal of experience in. I especially hate the ones that I wake up with which last all day, meaning that I go to bed with a migraine too. That would be today's migraine.

...2 more days till my birthday!