Coping, Meds & Supplements, Treatment

Begging & Bargaining With the Migraine Gods

Day four of a migraine attack and I’m begging the migraine gods that Ritalin isn’t the trigger. Please let it be that I worked too hard in yoga Friday (never mind that those migraine attacks always last two days), or some invisible weirdness with the weather (since the storm cleared on Sunday). If not those, let it be the amaranth I ate Sunday night or the 1/4 teaspoon of breadcrumbs I had on Monday.

I will work diligently and mind-numbingly slowly on the treadmill to regain my cardiovascular fitness without triggering migraine attacks. I will only go to gentle yoga classes until I do so. I will eat nothing but chicken and rice for the rest of my life. These are the rational trades I will make. If you need irrational, I’ll give up listening to Dave Matthews forever. Seriously. Last week was that amazing.

I’m sad and scared and desperate.

Please, migraine gods, if you have any mercy, don’t let it be the Ritalin. For a week I had my life back. My self back. Don’t obliterate me again.

5 thoughts on “Begging & Bargaining With the Migraine Gods”

  1. Migraine. My frequent visitor. I have, in the past, named each migraine with a unique name. I then shifted to calling the migraines, collectively, Marvin. Marvin is my unwelcomed visitor… he comes to stay with me far too often.
    In the last week I have begun thinking about being backwards. Marvin has become Nivram. I really like this name and have adopted it for a bit. Nivram, my migraine friend.
    On days that are not great, but not horrible I am visited by Maynerd, Nivram’s nephew.
    Personifying the migraine allows me to address it as a person. I can speak to the migraine. I can scream and curse it. I can make unreasonable demands. I can, as I calm myself, dialogue with the migraine… Nivram, what do you want? Why are you here again?

  2. Sounded like u r on Ritalin long enough to say it does help. That u have 4+ bad days may be so many random other impossible to really identify things, that staying with Ritalin may certainly be worth many more weeks with it. If u r not worse than before u started rit, I would stick with it.
    Also, Migrane not gods but devils.
    Good luck . Nicky

  3. So sorry… Sometimes it feels like its harder to take the pain after I get a little bit of relief…. I spend time wondering if its payback for the less severe migraine days I may have just basked in. During the good days I tell myself ill be willing to take on the next big migraine in return for the less severe days… Then the bad ones come back and I (sadly) think it sometimes would have been easier to maintain the pain level then to go on the roller coaster of hope.
    We WILL figure this out someday!!!

  4. I have a parallel: I went 10 days again without a migraine. Then, on Monday March 11th I did an hour and a half Bikram yoga class. I stopped doing regular yoga a long time ago because it usually brought on a migraine. Any type of arm work, like down dog or holding the arms straight out seemed to trigger something in my neck. I have taken a few Bikram classes in the past and found that they were much milder. Yes, the heat is intense but as long as I drank a lot of water, I was fine. Well, this class I didn’t modify and kept up with all of the poses. My neck started hurting slowly, with a creep until I had a full-on left-sided migraine. The gluten has resolved 70% of them, but these neck-related ones are tough to conquer. I love yoga but find I have to scale way back in order to come out unscathed. Maxalt did the trick though.

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