Shhh, please shhh

My poor long-suffering housemate has been asked once again to turn down the volume of his computer game in the other room.  I'm typing with one eye open only, trying to avoid another migraine.  I seem to be getting them really often lately, a sudden change.  I'm hoping that if the weather finally chooses a season and sticks with it, one of these days,  that the migraine frequency might go back to what it was before we had such wide swings in temperature etc. going on.  I know I'm under a lot of stress what with the challenge before me of "How ARE We Going To Pay The Rent Now ?", but this migraine cycle began before housemate got laid off.

Some migraines are more painful than others.  This current cluster is pretty nasty.  The pain reliever I'm having to use when they show up is "about eight times stronger than morphine and about three times stronger than heroin on a milligram basis" (description courtesy of Wikipedia.)  So I'm having pain at a level that is only controlled by using a Schedule II drug.  Wonderful.  And no, there is no "high" from taking the medication.  There is just a "thank you, God" relief of pain that brings it down to something one can tolerate and still remain alive.

These are not the worst migraines I have ever had.  Those were in high school, before I was diagnosed with anything wrong with me other than allergies.  I had a bf then who kept telling me I was sick a lot more often than was normal (I broke dates all the time due to illness, and it was real illness) but I truly believed that other people suffered just as much as I did physically from day to day, and that they all just handled it a lot better. 

 I remember that same bf reading an astronomy textbook to me for a university class we were both taking via a program for high school students to attend a University of California; I could not read myself as I had to keep my eyes closed due to increased pain from light.  He had to use a soft voice, too.  That was a monster headache and I don't know how I got an "A" in the class.  I wasn't able to do that with math and my math grades in university classes disappointed my high school math teacher who thought I was no longer applying myself.  I could not do calculus well with my eyes shut.  I needed to see it, on paper, and with a passel of migraines I did not have that option often enough.

I also flash back sometimes to a dry, hot, windy Santa Ana day in a September.  My head hurt so badly that I was lying on the floor, unable to get up.  I muttered a "please go away" to anyone who asked me what I was doing.  In retrospect I can see why family members might have thought I was a sandwich short of a picnic...

Anyway, although I would rather just let people be, I will put on the Controlling Bitch From The Nether Regions demeanor and tell everyone around me to shut the hell up if it means avoiding a sensation like having my head ripped open by an angry tiger, with some vertigo, photophobia, nausea, hyperacusis and osmophobia thrown in like side dishes at a terrible restaurant.  If you feel like looking those up.  Also for the more medically interested among you, I get migraines that are usually with aura, they do run in my family, but also could be secondary to SLE.  I would explain all of this but the computer screen is beginning to seem too bright for even one eye to tolerate any more.  Which means another evening of lying quietly in the dark.  Boring.  Bleh.

I for one am not surprised that the folks saying migraineurs are "just hysterical whiners" and who toss out other such ignorant put-downs are actually major-league wrong.  If any of you bullies are still around, I hiss at thee.  Quietly.