I woke up Saturday morning with an aching knee. It's pretty surprising I made it through one of the wettest seasons of all time without a constant throbbing ache in each of them. They're both aching now, so I went by the herbalist and got some more "dirt juice" fixin's. I thought I'd ask him about my headaches too. Been having some visual problems and I'd thought they were from allergies (thanks to the heavily perfumed ladies at the office) and that may be the cause, but the visual problem is actually the aura of a migraine. It never occurred to me that it could be a migraine because the following headache is not the worst pain of my life or anything.
Here's what happens: Suddenly I get a similar sensation to that of coming from the bright outdoors into a dimly lit room. It feels like it'll take a while for my eyes to adjust. The problem is that I haven't changed location, usually I'm just sitting there minding my own business. So this sensation leads to a blind spot right in the center of my field of vision. Peripheral vision is fine, but whatever is right in front of my face is impossible to focus on. It's like my brain knows something is there, but I just can't actually see it. It's disconcerting and after it happened a few times, kind of terrifying, but totally transient. It dissipates in 5 or 10 minutes and my vision is back to normal as if nothing ever happened.
But then, 30 minutes later… The headache. Like I said, it's not the worst headache of my life but it's there, and deep, and it hangs on for a day or two. Luckily I don't seem to get nauseous, but my digestion does suffer. I get a little sensitive to noise, more sensitive to light, and VERY irritable and lethargic. Basically, I want to go home and be alone. I can force myself to go out and can manage in the world and at work, and even have a good time, but yah. It sucks. Later when the headache goes away, my neck muscles become extremely stiff. Not great since it tends to engage the chronic spasm probs in my shoulder. Yay.
I wasn't sure what was going on and didn't put the aura together with the headache with the stiff neck… it isn't only the herbalist who confirms it as a migraine though, my regular western Jewish doctor does too. She says, take Excedrin. She also prescribed better allergy meds (probably the trigger) and something for the neck/shoulders. She seemed to think going for it with the herbs was as good an idea as any.
Before I left the herbalist he did an acupuncture session. I don’t usually feel much effect from the needles, it's relaxing but I've always felt that was as much due to the 30 minutes resting in a quiet room as the needles that were sticking out of me, but this time he did some points he's never done on me before; the Window to the Sky. Mostly up near the base of the skull, and when he turned out the light and left the room I hit the line between sleeping and waking and lingered there completely lost until he returned half an hour later. It was a confusing half dream state and probably the most relaxed I've been in months…. Maybe longer.
Posted by allison at April 5, 2006 03:59 PM