Thursday, July 28, 2011

Worst Night Ever

We drove home from Orlando on Saturday afternoon. I do not do well with car rides if I am not the driver...but I hate to drive, especially on the interstate, so I often find myself in a catch 22. I reclined my seat, propped my head up with a pillow, covered myself with a fuzzy blanket, sported some super dark sunglasses, turned down the radio, begged the boys to keep their voices to a whisper, took some pain and anti-nausea medication, and flipped open a magazine. I find it difficult to read in the car, but also wanted something to distract me. That's why I choose magazines for my car rides...I can just look at all the pretty little pictures and not really read the words. Well we were about 30 minutes into our trip home and the dreaded happened. My vision began getting distorted as if I were looking through a kaleidoscope. That's how it always begins. I tried not to panic, slammed close my magazine, rolled onto my side and tried to go to sleep. I did ok for awhile, then as we were getting closer to Jesse's parents house, to pick up Milo and Maisy...my symptoms worsened. Darkness started creeping into my peripheral vision. It slowly ascended from both sides. That was new for me. Usually my vision in my left eye gets dark from the top corner and decends. I panicked a bit...begging for everyone to keep silent and for Jesse to step on the gas. The rest of the way home was fairly uneventful. I came home, took more meds and jumped into my bed. I was quite pleased when I woke up from my nap that I felt pretty good. I thought I had managed to keep a full blown migraine away. So I got up, did some unpacking, threw some laundry in the washer and went about the rest of my evening. Before bed I noticed a slight throbbing in the top of my head with sharper stabbing pains in my right temporal area. I had Jesse rub my head a little, plopped on an ice pack, popped some meds to help me sleep and nodded off. For the first time in my life, I was awakened from horrific pain. A pounding in my head that was so great it was unbearable. In all of my years I have never experienced a migraine so bad. It truly was a 10 out of a 10 on the numerical pain scale. Now I KNOW what that means. Even after all of my procedures on my head and years of suffering...this was by far the worst. As Jesse was holding a bucket under my chin to catch the projectile vomit that kept spewing out of me...I begged him to take me to the ER. Apparently at one point I even told him I was going to the bathroom to hang myself. I do not remember. I desperately sprayed DHE up my nose several times. At some point, something worked because I fell asleep sitting up. The migraine continued for about 30 hours before any real relief came. I have been having residual head pain since and am contemplating calling my neurologist for a steroid dose pack. I can in all seriousness say I would rather die than go through what I went through Saturday night.

7 comments:

steph said...

:((( That sounds brutal.

Jessica said...

It was the WORST!

Heather said...

I'm so sorry you had to go through such pain! That's probably my biggest fear. I'd definitely call the neuro. Try to relax and take care of yourself!!

Heather said...

I do hope you are feeling much better today! Oh my, that must have been awful. I hope you never have that happen again!

Heather

Migrainista said...

Oh my gosh! Sounds horrible! Let's hope your doc can help you prevent that from happening again. I'm so sorry you went through that!

Jessica said...

Well now every time I have a twinge of pain I panic that's going to happen again. I don't know what triggered it and why it got so bad.

Sue said...

Oh no! That sounds so horrible.....I hope you get a long reprieve from that kind of pain. I shudder just thinking about it.