HAWMC, Day 12

Stream of Consciousness Day. Start with the sentence “This morning I looked in the mirror...” just write, don’t stop, don’t edit. Post!

This morning I looked in the mirror and thought I looked damn good for someone in pain all the time who had just woken up, bed-head aside. I stared at my face, looking for a sign of the pain above my ear and the back of my head. My eyes looked bright and I smiled at myself easily. When my migraines move forward, into my temples and eyes, then you can really see the pain on me. I squint and my eyebrows become cartoon squiggles of angst, my mouth goes tight and I hunch noticeably. Hey, while I'm thinking about it, I should take inventory of my aches and pains. This is something I like to keep track of, how my symptoms change over time and with different circumstances, and I haven't done a sum up in a while, so... starting from the top.

My head still hurts daily, but not constantly, unless I focus on it. So, I guess it is constant, but it's below my pain radar sometimes, which is fantastic. When I sit still and don't talk too much, I can feel normal for a while. Except my "normal" would never involve sitting still and being quiet, but I'll take what I can get.

My neck frequently cramps and cricks itself, and I'm never quite sure whether the migraine causes the neck drama or vice-versa, but they are close cousins in their torment and frequently gang up on me. Mean.

Ditto for my jaw, which is always popping and often tense.

I'm not going into full-on, non-functional, fetal-position migraines nearly as often, only for maybe 10 hours a week lately, though it's been more when I've pushed myself too hard. Feeling better gives me a false sense of security sometimes, like when I went to the bookstore to get my textbooks. I ended up having a bit of a meltdown in the loud, crowded, confusion that is the second day of classes, it was super embarrassing. That overstimulation led to hours of migraining, but the next day I recovered so much quicker than I have in the past. I think the redwoods are magic, sometimes.

Non-pain migraine symptoms have included dizziness, stumbling and clumsiness, mild to moderate nausea ALL THE FREAKING TIME but still never vomiting, thankfully. I continue to experience aphasia, but rarely and only briefly. Visual auras are less frequent, maybe three times a week, and they're easy to ignore, just some peripheral movement or a few sparklies floating about. I've smelled poo a few times in the past few months and once I smelled rotten eggs. That was a new one.

Oh, and outside of the migraines, my back still has some pain, off and on. I got some xrays taken with a spine guy who said they didn't show anything interesting and then blew me off. I'm rather confused about how it all went down and I keep meaning to write about it, but it was just a weird experience and I don't really understand what happened. I think I need to get a copy of those xrays though, because the back pain I have, while it rarely disables me, can not possibly be nothing.

My shoulders and hips sometimes feel achy, loose, or overused, when I've done nothing strange to them. It's not often enough for me to have brought up with a doctor, however.

I have something going on with my left hip area. My boyfriend thinks it's my sciatic nerve, I feel like it might be my hip joint sometimes. I asked the spine guy about it, but he was no help.I'm getting some weakness and pain in my wrists and sometimes my finger joints feel cramped and tight. I don't know what it is but psoriatic arthritis runs in my family so I try not to dwell on it. So far it's just annoying, so maybe it's just some tendonitis from all the computering I'm doing lately. HAWMC and school have had my fingers tippy-typing even more than usual.

Speaking of, they need a break.