So that's what a migraine is...
Yesterday, I got to have my very first migraine! It almost seems like I should think of this as some kind of an inauguration, but I don't. Saturday morning, I woke up, and went to the grocery store. Normal Saturday. I had a couple more bacteria that needed to be processed up in the lab, so I headed up onto campus to take care of that. I was interpreting and running biochemicals when a couple other people from my major showed up. Yes, I have one of those majors where there are more people than you can count on one hand working up in the lab on a Saturday morning. Anyways, I was working with Paige and Eric, two people in my major, when I started to get a kind of hazy glaze over my right eye.
For a few moments, I just rubbed it and blinked it away, thinking that it was just going out of focus for a moment. When I was younger, I had a big problem with my pupils not focusing on the same place and actually had prisms in my glasses to fix it. My eyes have been trained out of it, but every once in awhile, they get lazy and go out for a second. So, I figured that's what they were doing. It is also very difficult to rub your eyes when you have Strep pyogenes, Salmonella, Staph aureus, and Pasteurella on your hands. WRIST RUBBING! But it kept going on; soon, I started to feel like I couldn't even see out of that eye. I closed my left eye just to make sure that I wasn't blind in my right eye. I could still see, but it was weird. I was on the verge of saying to Paige and Eric, "Hey guys, I can't see out of my right eye," but figured that I was probably just blurred up a bit and didn't want to overreact.
I finished up my work and checked on one of the other research assistants in my research lab, as she had been there all night long measuring bacterial growth every hour for a growth curve. That, by the way, is one of the main reasons I am glad I do not work on an evolution project. At this point, I still thought that my eye had just gone funky for a moment, so I just planned to go home where everything would be fine soon. When I got in the elevator, I got this crazy headache behind my eyes and got ridiculously hot. Beth had called me while I was in the lab, and I had told her I would call her back when I got out, so I braced myself against the elevator wall while I called her. She wondered if I wanted to can jalapeno jelly with her. I told her if I felt better I would, but that I didn't feel well.
I got home, jumped in the shower. The shower was cold, as it usually is on Saturday mornings, because not enough people have been using the water, but I didn't care, because at this point, I was ridiculously hot. I took two ibuprofen (you know I'm in pain when I go straight to two, I almost always start and stop with one), and then laid down on the couch. It was too noisy out there. After telling my roommate my symptoms, she told me I probably had a migraine. I curled up in a ball on my bed and then started getting nauseous. I have never vomited in the dark before, but the light was annoying, and the fan thing that comes with our bathroom light was really loud. So, I did. At this point, the MLS major inside of me started panicking, because light sensitivity, extreme headaches and projectile vomiting were all on the symptom list for bacterial meningitis. When you're in freakout mode, you don't realize that nuchal rigidity is the pathognommonic symptom. AKA if you don't have a stiff neck, you almost assuredly don't have bacterial meningitis. Then, Beth came to get the canning stuff (because I own the canning stuff), and gave me an ice pack. She got migraines while she was pregnant and said that putting ice on the back of your neck helps. She also abducted one of my blankets off my bed to block some more light out of my window. I then put a sweatshirt over my head and slept for four hours.
When I woke up, I felt a lot better, but still had this kind of haze. After reading my textbooks, I learned that this is called the postdromal stage.
It was a weird experience. And a total waste of a Saturday.
For a few moments, I just rubbed it and blinked it away, thinking that it was just going out of focus for a moment. When I was younger, I had a big problem with my pupils not focusing on the same place and actually had prisms in my glasses to fix it. My eyes have been trained out of it, but every once in awhile, they get lazy and go out for a second. So, I figured that's what they were doing. It is also very difficult to rub your eyes when you have Strep pyogenes, Salmonella, Staph aureus, and Pasteurella on your hands. WRIST RUBBING! But it kept going on; soon, I started to feel like I couldn't even see out of that eye. I closed my left eye just to make sure that I wasn't blind in my right eye. I could still see, but it was weird. I was on the verge of saying to Paige and Eric, "Hey guys, I can't see out of my right eye," but figured that I was probably just blurred up a bit and didn't want to overreact.
I finished up my work and checked on one of the other research assistants in my research lab, as she had been there all night long measuring bacterial growth every hour for a growth curve. That, by the way, is one of the main reasons I am glad I do not work on an evolution project. At this point, I still thought that my eye had just gone funky for a moment, so I just planned to go home where everything would be fine soon. When I got in the elevator, I got this crazy headache behind my eyes and got ridiculously hot. Beth had called me while I was in the lab, and I had told her I would call her back when I got out, so I braced myself against the elevator wall while I called her. She wondered if I wanted to can jalapeno jelly with her. I told her if I felt better I would, but that I didn't feel well.
I got home, jumped in the shower. The shower was cold, as it usually is on Saturday mornings, because not enough people have been using the water, but I didn't care, because at this point, I was ridiculously hot. I took two ibuprofen (you know I'm in pain when I go straight to two, I almost always start and stop with one), and then laid down on the couch. It was too noisy out there. After telling my roommate my symptoms, she told me I probably had a migraine. I curled up in a ball on my bed and then started getting nauseous. I have never vomited in the dark before, but the light was annoying, and the fan thing that comes with our bathroom light was really loud. So, I did. At this point, the MLS major inside of me started panicking, because light sensitivity, extreme headaches and projectile vomiting were all on the symptom list for bacterial meningitis. When you're in freakout mode, you don't realize that nuchal rigidity is the pathognommonic symptom. AKA if you don't have a stiff neck, you almost assuredly don't have bacterial meningitis. Then, Beth came to get the canning stuff (because I own the canning stuff), and gave me an ice pack. She got migraines while she was pregnant and said that putting ice on the back of your neck helps. She also abducted one of my blankets off my bed to block some more light out of my window. I then put a sweatshirt over my head and slept for four hours.
When I woke up, I felt a lot better, but still had this kind of haze. After reading my textbooks, I learned that this is called the postdromal stage.
It was a weird experience. And a total waste of a Saturday.
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