Phew! I sit here with my feet up on the coffee table as Lance finishes up the first-ever batch of Roggendorff home brew. It’s been about a six-hour process, complete with all the right amount of mishaps (sticky beer spilled all over the floor, the realization that we needed to sterilize more water RIGHT as we needed it, had to run out to the store for more ice, etc.). But our good friends Amy and Daniel were here to help and keep us company, so it was fun. And with any luck, in a few months’ time I’ll be posting about the deliciousness that is the Roggendorff porter.

Unless I can’t drink any.

Oh, hi! Did you see that segue? Oh, MAN was that good. At least, it would have been good, if I hadn’t broken that smooth transition to point out how smooth a transition it was. So now you’re just like, “A segue to what? Where are you transitioning?” Just pretend this paragraph isn’t here. I’m going to leave it here because it’s late and at the moment it’s making me laugh, although tomorrow when I read back over this I’ll probably wonder why I ever thought it was funny.

MIGRAINES: A Brief History

When I was about 12, I came down with the worst headache I’d ever had. I remember lying on the couch with a cold washcloth on my forehead, moaning in agony. All the lights were off because they felt like daggers in my eyes, and my mother was sitting with me and whispering because noise felt like daggers in my ears. The pain was so bad I was throwing up. I’d never experienced anything so horrible in all my born days. I thought I was merely sick with some kind of cancerous, bone-shattering, torturous, impending-death thing. I had no idea it would be so much worse than that: the onset of a lifetime battle with migraines. (Even the word makes me feel ill. Say it out loud. Doesn’t it just sound like your imminent doom arises?)

Ok. So fast-forward 10 years, and I’m at church, and this guy says, “I feel like we need to pray for people who suffer from migraines.” And I’m all, WHERE DO I KNEEL? I mean it was so simple, the guy is like, “…something something something, and heal anyone who gets migraines, something something something else.” And I’m like, cool, that maybe worked. And Reader, I cross my heart and hope to die, IT WORKED. God healed me; it’s true. I didn’t get another migraine from that point RIGHT up until about three months ago.

BOOOOOOM.

Let me say this for the record: I don’t believe God took away His healing because I didn’t read my Bible last week. Not that I can claim to know what God is thinking, because despite the prayers of myself and my husband and family and friends, the migraines aren’t going away. And that little voice inside my head wonders why I’m having to pray this at all, since I was throughly healed four years ago. (Did I say “little” voice? Allow me to correct myself: I meant HUGE voice. ASTRONOMICAL. CRISIS. ZOUNDS.) This is all food for thought, and possible thought for another blog post. But now that I’ve caught you up on the history, let’s get back to the present.

MIGRAINES: A Day in the Life

I usually know what’s coming as soon as I wake up. The pain is on one side of my neck and shoots all the way up into my eyeball. I have, of late, become a perpetual pill popper, which I will get to in a second, but by this time I know the pills will only serve to lessen the inevitable migraine, not kill it. I switch between Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen; neither do much at this point anyway. Plus, about half an hour later the nausea starts, and I start throwing up soon thereafter. The throwing up is the worst part. I know people who can barf and feel better; I am not one of those people. The shakes and the pounding in my already-sore head follow the retching, and I scrape my pathetic body off the bathroom floor and heave it back into bed. On good migraine days, I puke once or twice, and exhaustion outweighs the pain in my head, which causes me to sleep, and I almost always feel better after a couple of hours sleep. Almost always. On bad migraine days, the ralphing is continual, sleep doesn’t come, and the migraine laaaassstttsss aaannnndddd laaaaasssstttss.

Oh, I lied. The throwing up is not the worst part, Reader. The worst part of all this is that I am out of commission for at least half the day until I recover enough to sit up on my own and eat some crackers. The worst part is that these migraines are so debilitating that I can’t take care of my son. I CAN’T TAKE CARE OF MY SON. Lance, the one who works from home in order to make money, in order for us to live in a house and have food, has to do it. Between trying to squeeze in a few minutes of work and diaper changes and feedings and keeping Noah entertained, he runs back to check on me, with my head over the toilet bowl or in bed moaning with a cold washcloth on my forehead. And all I can do is lay there listening to Noah fussing or laughing or talking or crying and I can’t be with him because I’m barely alive.

God, it’s fucking LONELY.

So I’m just thinking about how much I’m missing and how I can’t do the one job I have right now, which is to be Noah’s mom, and my overworked husband has to do it instead. And then I get angry and start crying, which makes everything SO much better. Eventually I fall asleep and wake up dazed to the sound of Noah wailing because he needs me (read: he needs my boobs) and I usually feel well enough to get up and nurse him, shower, and eat some broth or something.

And that’s how it goes. Every week. Oh, didn’t I mention? This happens ONCE. A. WEEK. In fact, I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that in the last three months, I’ve had five times as many migraines as I ever have in the rest of my life, EVER. COMBINED. I’ve done research, and worst-case scenarios are ones where women get MONTHLY migraines around the time of their periods. I’m JEALOUS OF THE WORST-CASE SCENARIOS. I’m all, once a MONTH!? Where do I sign up for that?

MIGRAINES: Searching (in Vain) for the Solution

Fear haunts me. Every day I wake up and if I don’t feel the tell-tale pinch in my neck and claw-like grip on the back of my eye, I’m overwhelmed with relief and joy. But I know I’m not completely off the hook, because there have been times when the onset of a migraine comes in the middle of the day. If I’m well all day, by nighttime I’m so relieved to not have had a migraine that I thank the Lord for protecting me. Then I’m racked with fear thinking about the night ahead of me and the morning I’ll face in a few hours. I spend my last moments of consciousness petitioning God to protect me the following day from a migraine.

I mentioned that I’ve become a perpetual pill-popper. I hate this because I’m still breastfeeding, and because your body can develop a tolerance when you take medicine all the time. But fear grips me with the slightest twinge in my neck or head. IT COULD LEAD TO ME OVER THE TOILET, PEOPLE. I end up taking over-the-counter pain killers almost every day.

I’ve been to the doctor. She prescribed me a low dose of some medication which I’ve used and which does NOTHING. The doctor talked with me about some of the triggers in my diet, such as caffeine, wine, chocolate, cheese… basically everything I love. I cut out alcohol, because I thought I noticed migraines the morning after I’d drink even a small margarita or glass of wine. But it didn’t help. I researched some more and found out low estrogen can be a trigger, which I have because I’m still breastfeeding. A major trigger also, it seems, is SLEEP DISTURBANCES. AHEM, NOAH ROGGENDORFF. But I know plenty of moms who are still breastfeeding and waking several times a night and don’t suffer for it with this horrid sickness.

I’ve thought how awesome it would feel to saw off my head. I HAVE HAD THAT THOUGHT. I decided not a good solution though, in the end. After some discussion with Lance.

I watched Noah scoot around on the floor today, and promptly got up and made another appointment with my doctor. I’m going to ask her to send me to a migraine specialist I found in Nashville. I can’t live like this, especially when Noah starts crawling. If this doesn’t end, what am I going to do? (No Megs, it’s just fear, fear, fear… stop it.) So I’m going to the doctor on Wednesday, and I’m still going to keep praying and trusting that God will have compassion on my poor husband and baby, and ME, and heal me again. If you believe in prayer, please pray for me. If you DON’T believe in prayer, please pray for me anyway.

I’ll keep y’all posted.