A Migraine Walking
This is one person’s experience with a migraine which starts at work and ends at home with a bottle of a family member’s pills.
At first, it was a small torment mildly noticeable throughout the day, but Alvie felt the first real pang of pain in the elevator while riding back from the cafeteria after his lunch, which was an antipasto salad. When he got to his cubicle, he searched his drawers for a pain reliever, some kind of reliever, but he struck out.
He shuffled through the files on his desk, then typed several more details of the lives and progress of his clients into the database. This poor person had an eye infection. Alvie rubbed his eye absentmindedly, the way someone scratches their head unconsciously after reading about a lice outbreak at the local school. He paused briefly realizing what he was doing and walked to the sink down the hall to wash his hands again and to rinse his face.
After that, he walked to the coffee machine and scooped two sugars into the paper cup and poured thick black coffee into it. He shook a little powdered creamer onto the liquid and stirred it with a flexible brown straw and walked back to his cube sipping the hot liquid hoping it’d offer some relief. He sat at his desk and rubbed his thumb and forefinger around his left temple as he listened to voice messages on his right side.
A halo around lights or objects is one form of aura experienced by migraine sufferers. Dayna Brown Dolan photo credit.
When he was done on the phone, there was a dull ringing in his head–a low-grade hum, deeper and louder than the normal hum he hears that may emanate from electric appliances and maybe from the spinning of the earth. He typed a few more applications into the database, more ages, someone with the same birthday as Sylvia Plath, and other weights and heights indicating cost of care.
An aura of waves–that sometimes come with these episodes–began across the screen making the teal background look like miniblinds in the summer light. He double blinked and looked behind him, out his cubical across the aisle to his coworker’s screen, but spinning in the chair caused a spell of vertigo. Waves seemed to cascade from the ceiling-tiled lights.
Alvie steadied himself on the ergonomic desktop. He felt like he had spikes protruding on three sides of his head. After a few moments, he shut down the computer knowing he could not do any more, and he hoped he could make it to his car, then operate it long enough to get home.
He walked across the aisle of the office and told his colleague he had to leave. She opened the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet and took out a three-ring binder, made a note, told him to make up the time, and dismissed him. He used the side of the cubicle as a crutch, turned, and slinked away hoping not to need to talk to anyone else.
The movement of the elevator and the flickering of the overhead bulb that was on the blink half the time caused a surge of energy up his jaw and into his head. The moment the door opened, Alvie pivoted and heaved into the trash bin-ashtray combination in the lobby.
He coughed, wiped his lower lip with the back of his hand and sleeve and staggered across the tile to the revolving door. He decided it best to use the handicapped door, wasn’t he at his moment actually crippled by this head pain? He avoided the spinning exit.
He walked on concrete slabs in the building’s shade until he reached the street when the sun ripped through his retinas causing another surge, like a steel pipe whacked against the left side of his head until it was pushed in, eyelid hanging, skull crushed to a pulpy mush inside the skin.
The surge of pain made him puke in the gutter with his hands-on-knees, the forward motion making his head throb harder. It seemed that even his hair hurt. His throat burned with bile, and saliva hung from his lips as he recovered from the spell. After a few beats, he looked around slowly to see if anyone saw him throw up. A teenager in jeans and a black t-shirt over a thermal one grimaced toward him, but she maybe wore that face all the time. There was a graying-haired man smoking a cigarette at the corner of the building, but he wasn’t looking. If he saw Alvie’s mishap, he didn’t let on. Alvie waited for the string of traffic to pass, which he saw through squinting eyes, then he crossed the street to the lot where he parked his car.
He moved slowly like he may spill the drink that is his mind right there in the street. He momentarily couldn’t see as the sun glinted off the hoods of the shiny cars and their mirrors.
He stood at the driver’s side and leaned his head against the relatively cool trim of his car door. A ripple of clamminess crawled down his neck and the skin around his mouth went cold. Reaching up instinctively, he felt to see if his lips were as frozen as they felt. He opened the car and slumped down in the seat and closed his eyes with one foot still outside the car door on the pavement.
He hoped he wouldn’t barf again in the car. He admitted that this would pass but contemplated the emergency room. They won’t give him anything good for pain, he thought or he’d have to wait so long that the episode could be over before ever being treated, as happened last time. Alvie searched the glove compartment and the center console for some type of medicine that would help but came up empty handed. Even the basics took an hour to reach full effect and he needed to get to them first.
Thankfully, there were sunglasses in the car which improved the likelihood that he would be able to see long enough in short bursts at least enough to drive the six miles home. He put the car in drive and pulled out of the lot. At each stop light, of which there were three, and stop signs, of which there were four –Alvie rested his eyes, causing one driver to honk impatiently at him. Thank goodness, traffic was light in between school times and work dismissals.
Before long he was home, he climbed the stairs to his apartment, fumbled with both locks, and entered. He first pulled the shades, then got a glass of water running it quietly into a glass not at full flow, opened the kitchen cabinet where his mother kept her pills for when her back went out.
The bottle read: Take 1-2 for moderate to severe pain. He swallowed two right off. The pain is severe. Then he took off his shoes and left them on the kitchen floor, got an ice pack from the freezer and moved to the sofa with it. He slugged his way back to the kitchen and he pulled out a large pot from under the sink just in case he wasn’t done heaving.
He sat crossed legged and leaned his head against the couch and the icepack. His eye sockets pulsed with his heart, and he wondered if his blood pressure was elevated. He wondered if he was having a heart attack; didn’t his jaw hurt? is it the left-side of the head that’s more likely to have an aneurysm or embolism? But this headache is mostly like the others he thought, but it was so hard to think when he felt this way.
When he’s like this, he can’t recall some of the other ways he can try to treat this. He could squeeze the flesh between thumb and forefinger. He could massage his big toes as part of his reflexology training. He could put his hands and wrists in an ice bath. A cold shower could stimulate the vagus nerve for some relief. He could fill the diffuser with essential oil of something.
But he couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t execute the tasks.
He pressed his head into the couch cushion focusing on the scratch of the fabric. His eyes leaked tears down his face, but he wasn’t aware of them.
Alvie felt a jagged edge of pain upon opening his eyes, but he felt as if he were leaning back on a swing when he closed them. He had to choose between the whirling queasiness or the stabbing agony.
He gagged but willed the pills to stay down for potential relief. He wiped the wetness from his cheeks and chin. He couldn’t think about the rebound that could come from taking narcotics. He couldn’t think about how those narcotics can warp a person’s perception of pain. They can permanently change how the receptors work, but he couldn’t think of what the receptors were called at the moment.
At this point, Alvie was teetering near consciousness as waves of light radiated from behind his left eye and spread out as if he was pressing on his eyelids, but he wasn’t. His face was wet again from his tears. He slowly laid down, slowly sliding down the cushions. Then he sat up twice to heave over the pan, acidic liquid dripping from his mouth. He doesn’t know how long he was there, but he stumbled to the bathroom and relieved himself–sitting on the toilet, peeing, and shitting, and vomiting at the same time. He cleaned himself, washed his hands, and rinsed his face.
Then because he’d purged the medicine, Alvie took two more white pills and wobbled to his bedroom using the wall for balance. He crawled slowly into bed, sleeping fitfully for several hours.
When he woke it was thick and dark outside. He’d been drooling on his pillow, and he stood up realizing a dull ache remained across the front of his head, and his neck and back were sore from retching so deeply, and his throat burned from the vomit. Alvie felt as if he’d been in an accident. In the mirror, he looked entirely himself, lest some puffiness around the eyes and crust in the corners of his mouth. There was some peeling skin on his lips from dehydration which probably triggered the whole migraine episode.
He knows he needs to keep an eye on his diet, stress, and liquid intake. He should avoid chocolate and peanut butter, wines and cheeses, MSG and caffeine. That sounded more like his grocery list lately rather than a list of foods he should be avoiding. Where caffeine is concerned, it can also be a cure to a headache as in an some migraine over-the-counter (OTC) medication he normally had on hand. It’s at this point he realized, he’s got to be more careful so he doesn’t lose his job, and he needs some more of those pain pills.
I only provide commonly used links and speak from experience. Please be sure to check with your doctor or your local clinic if you need immediate help.
Cover image “headache” by jemastock at Vecteezy
