I didn’t have my first migraine until I was expecting Keith; normally migraines start earlier than that. In that, however, I have been very very consistent; the neurologist says I get atypical migraines. Like a bucket of memes, I just never know what I’m gonna get!
When I get a flash, or a weird sensation, or a heavy lowering feeling, I never know what to think. Is it “Ermagerd, I’m having a small stroke?” (link removed for safety) Is it, “Bloody weather!”. Is it, “Oh great, now I can’t trust my emotions, since a migraine made me think I needed to end it all when I er, actually had no basis for such a belief!!?” (Actually, on sober second consideration, when CAN one trust one’s emotions? Apart from the Gift of Fear?)
Then there’s the bizarre range of physical sensations, previously catalogued, and visual disturbances (which in the last five years have occasionally been mesmerizingly beautiful, like the time my entire visual field briefly filled (transparently, I hasten to add, so if I had been driving I still would have been able to see) with coruscating rainbow fishscales about two inches wide at arms length. SO PRETTY HOW I GET SOME. EAT UM!
About five years ago my relationship with migraines changed. I realized that since migraines are brain chemistry foulups, pure and simple, I had the power to change my brain chemistry. If I think happy thoughts, I can make scintillating scotomas go away. At first I did not want to believe that I could do that, but I have enough evidence to satisfy myself that, yup, I can do that. If I sit, breathe, think about the days I gave birth to my children, and saw Hole at Thunderbird Stadium, and went to Hot Springs Cove, and watched mOm and pOp put up the geodesic greenhouse in the back yard in Ottawa, and saw mammatus clouds IRL, and saw a UFO shaped lenticular cloud, and flew to Vancouver in an Otter about 15 meters off the deck the whole way…. I can make that brain chemistry break up like morning fog.
So I dunno, Ms. Migraine, whether you think you’re going to land on me today, but I don’t want you around, so I gotta cheer up.
