Migraines

I Deal With It had a post about this today and it brought back memories of one of the less pleasant experiences I've had of growing older. In many ways my twin and I have grown both more alike and less alike as we get older. Some of our health issues are the same even as we get to them at different ages. Migraines seem to be one of those things.

One of the gifts of age that I'd just as soon return is that I now have migraines. And migraines are not in the same class of regular headaches. I've had headaches and I've had migraines and I've met people who say, "Oh I had a migraine and I just continued to do what I was doing." They had a bad headache, but not a migraine.

I sometimes know when a migraine is about to come. I've found that my head starts tilting to the side an hour or two before it actually arrives. But since I don't spend that much time staring at myself in the mirror I usually only notice when someone says something along the lines of 'you're tilting your head to the side is there some reason?' and I run, not walk, to get one of the OTC medicines that I always have around. I don't always get it taken in time but... when I do I avoid things like sounds making my head throb, lights flashing at me, aches in time with my heartbeat, cold washcloths on my head and more.

And I actually do have migraines where I clutch the desk when someone speaks. Or when I don't want to walk down the hall because my head throbs with each step and there are flashes in my eyes when I walk between minor changes in shadow and light (variations I don't notice other times). And when people call their headaches migraines and they just aren't that bad it irritates me. I want to keep the name for the actual condition.