I don’t like my kids right now.
I love them. I do. Right now, though, and especially last night, I have moments where I want nothing to do with them at all.
I should have known what was happening yesterday, but since it’s been so long I was either ignoring it or had my head up my ass. It started when I was driving to Target and didn’t feel so good. Sort of nauseous. Couldn’t see well. I put on my sunglasses and drank some water and thought I was ok.
Thought I had a sinus headache.
My kids are doing this loud thing right now. Livvie’s mouth doesn’t shut from the time she opens her eyes in the morning until she closes them at night. Jonas is screaming to hear himself scream. I read tonight that a normal baby scream is in the 115 decibel range. He’s not normal. I’ve never heard a baby scream like this, and at one point this afternoon he sounded like an amped up version of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.
We’re talking about last night, though.
As I got the plates from the cupboard (read: dishwasher) so I could put dinner on them my head exploded. I haven’t had a migraine since last fall, and last night’s ended up being one of my all time worst. Jonas started up. Livvie egged him on. She was laughing, and he got laughing, and then he’d scream louder while Livvie was all, “Too loud!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!” and I wanted to unzip my face from my skull and just start clawing my brains out of it with my nails.
One of my biggest pet peeves is people who refer to migraines as “headaches.” The second related peeve is people who have a bad headache and say they have a migraine.
In 2000 I had a migraine that lasted for 8 days straight. I ended up in the ER having a CAT scan because my speech was slurring and one side of my face had gone numb. Migraines are a type of seizure disorder, and no one really knows why they happen. They have ideas about what can trigger them, but as far as I’ve read (on the Internet and in a Dummies book, so it must be true) the actual cause of them isn’t understood. Mine used to be triggered by hormones, and like clockwork if I ovulated I’d get a migraine. I also got them for no good reason whatsoever, though. They calmed down considerably once I got pregnant with Livvie, and I’ve had maybe two a year since she was born.
Holy fuck. Last night.
I didn’t have time to take my pills before the pain hit. I take a very old fashioned drug called Epidrin for them, and they’re a mix of Tylenol, a sedative, and a vaso-constrictor. If I take them when the aura hits I can usually fend off the migraine. The problem yesterday was that I had been having the aura all day and didn’t connect the dots. By the time the pain hit it was as if someone had stuck my head in a vice and gave the handle a quick spin until it popped. My skull went cold, and the nausea was almost unbearable. Since I was too late on the meds I dealt with it all while I got the kids fed and into their pajamas and in bed. The pills knock my ass out, and I needed to not fall face down in front of them.
I forced myself to eat because dry heaves are worse than barfing up food, if it came to that.
I slapped Jonas in bed first because he was the loudest. He hadn’t stopped with the screaming, and every time his voice jammed
through my eardrum my skull whanged. I got Livvie in bed and shut off every light I could in the main part of the house. Rich had no idea what was going on until I walked in, told him what was going down, and told him I’d be lying down in the dark.
I took my two pills, opened the recliner, laid down, and grabbed my skull with each hand and pressed inward as hard as I could to keep it from actually splitting in half.
Does that really work? I don’t know. I know it felt like it was important to do so. Sometimes my hair hurt, and I’d have to scratch it around on my head to keep it from driving me out of my own skin. Most of the time I just pressed my hands around my skull like I was getting ready for the three point shot, and I drifted in and out until the edge of it was gone.
I got up, wrote last night’s post, and discovered that the glow from the screen in a dark kitchen was enough to set it off again. Another pill. Fuck suffering for your work.
Directions- take two to start, then one every hour after up to five pills in a twelve hour period.
I had four last night.
Then I got to sleep for enough time that it retreated.
What I hate about that level of migraine is that it’s still there. It’s not gone. The massive pain is gone, but there’s a whisper of it in the back of my head that’s letting me know that it could come back at any second.
And the boy still screams, and the girl still talks, and even though they’re in bed now I know they’ll start all over again tomorrow.
I hope it’s gone by then. Last night my hand almost flew to stop the noise.
So many girls I know in real life tell me they get migraines. I however thankfully do not. This sounds hellish.
Yeah. It is. It’s also scary as all get out.
Ahh, migraines. I got them when I was a kid. Thankfully, not so frequently anymore. Rick is prone to really terrible headaches (he’s a bit photosensitive, and having kids has by necessity put us on a day schedule instead of the night schedule we held prior), and every now and then he’ll be popping extra-strength ibuprofen like they’re M&Ms and retreating to take a bath where the only light’s a single candle that he half-blocks with the shower curtain anyway.
My peds doctor classified the severity of migraines this way:
1- The kind where you wish you’d die
2 – The kind where you’re afraid you’ll die
3 – The kind where you’re afraid you won’t die
That list is perfect. On that scale I was between 2 and 3 the other night. It waffled. Those moments of wondering if it’s just going to end up a stroke suck.
I didn’t start getting these until I was about 20. I can’t imagine being a kid with them. A good friend of mine started as a toddler and now one of her twin boys started getting them when he was a toddler too. How frigging awful.
Ugh. I get bad sinus headaches (this year was a record one that went on for more than 6 straight weeks without going away, no lie) and I can’t even begin to imagine how much worse a migraine is. But I was heartened to learn that I’m not the only one who uses her dishes straight out of the dishwasher
Doesn’t everyone?
It’s easier to pull them from there than it is to get them out of the stack in the cabinet.
I feel your pain…I get them too. My main trigger is perfume. And since I work with the public it is kinda hard to prevent that. As soon as someone walks in with that certain something I know it, not all perfumes set me off, and it doesn’t seem to matter if they are expensive or cheap. I cannot imagine Having two loud kids while dealing with one….I think I’d have to pitch a tent far far away!!!
Perfume is the devil. It is. EVIL.
{{{Julie}}} I so feel your pain. I started with migraines when I was 7. Some years are really bad and some are really good. I’ve learned my triggers, but sometimes there is no good reason for my head to feel like it’ll explode. I hold my head that way too when it is bad. I can honestly say that, in the moment, I wouldn’t care if my head exploded so long as the pain stopped. Be careful, my friend, migraines like that can come back over an over again til they wear themselves out. Try to avoid your triggers (not easy as a mom) and try wearing sunglasses in the house as well as out. That is one of my new experiments with which I’ve had some success.
That actually sounds like a good idea. Thanks!