What a night...

Apologies for the long, boring story that follows, but I've had a lot of email and a lot of concerned friends. Thank you so much - your concern for me touches me and makes me feel very loved. I'm fortunate to have such good friends! So I thought I'd just do a post here to let you all know I'm not about to die.

If you've been following my saga at all either here or over at Facebook, you know that I've had a migraine for a solid week. Bad. It started to get a little better mid-week, then worse toward the end of the week. Yesterday, it was so bad that I seriously considered I was going to have a stroke, or had an aneurysm, or some other terrible diagnosis. I take medication twice a day prophylactically, as well as having meds on hand for acute flareups. Nothing was helping, and the amount of Advil I was taking on top of it all was going to tear my stomach to shreds.

So about 5 pm, Bob decided enough was enough, and off to the ER we went.

Well, the first thing that happened was, it was Saturday evening in the ER. Not the quietest place to be. In the waiting room was a spanish-speaking family there with about 20 members of their immediate and extended family. Including every whiny, obnoxious child they could drum up. Thankfully, I was seen fairly quickly. Only to be placed on a gurney in the hallway - they were full. Normally, I can roll with the punches, and I wouldn't care. But with a migraine from hell, every single noise and light was amplified. All the crying, screaming, and the radio transmissions (and there were a lot last night considering my sleepy little town) seemed to make everything worse. So much so that I started crying (no help for the headache at all!) and asked Bob to take me home and let me have my stroke in peace, LOL. Drama queen much?

I got a nice young fresh-faced doctor who immediately gave me morphine (which I absolutely HATE!) along with an anti-nausea medication. It didn't touch the pain, but did give me loads of nausea along with a pretty decent buzz. I floated along above my body noting that the poor girl there had a really awful headache. That buzz lasted about an hour, at which point she gave me dilaudid - even stronger than morphine. And a sublibgual anti-nausea med. Both of which served to make me even more woozy, and more nauseous. But didn't touch my headache.

I finally realized that Bob keeps earplugs in the car, so asked him to go get them. While he was gone, some guy started freaking out. I didn't open my eyes, but heard a lot of "f" words and mother"f" words. Needless to say, they didn't allow Bob back into the patient area for a good long time. But I finally got my earplugs which helped a little.

FINALLY, around midnight, enough folks either got sent home or admitted that I got moved into a real room, where they could close the door and turn off the lights. But the damn nurse kept lowering the head of the bed to make me more comfortable, when all it did was make me puke. Duh - get a clue. I kept asking her to leave it up, too. Oy!

Anyway, finally the doctor says she's run out of narcotics to try - to which I say good! I didn't want them in the first place - I had told her I don't react well to them. So she decides to give me some heavy duty steroids. Now, as an asthmatic and a former respiratory therapist, me likey the steroids. Great, I say. In goes the IV, and along with the steroids goes some Reglan, another heavy-duty anti-nausea med. Finally, a little relief. I once again say to the doctor that it's so unusual for me to have a migraine of this length and maybe something else is going on? So she shuffles her feet and says... in a big Aha! moment... I'm going to order a CT scan! Great, now we're getting somewhere. And the headache is finally starting to get a little better with the steroids on board.

30 minutes after the CT, mystery solved. I had a migraine on top of a massive sinus infection, and they were feeding off one another. So I couldn't get rid of the migraine because I have a sinus infection feeding it. But I don't have any of my usual sinus infection symptoms, which was really weird. So anyway, after getting home at 3AM, (and how happy am I that we can leave the kids home), I am now on antibiotics.

And she still forced a narcotic prescription on me in case I had some more severe pain over the next couple days. LOL. I didn't fill that one. Sure, narcotics have their place - after major surgery, or for people with a low pain tolerance, or for those with debilitating illness. But I don't care for the way they make me feel. No thank you.

Anyway, end of story, and g-d willing, end of headache. Hopefully between the drugs and the glasses, I'll be as good as new in a week or so. Thank you again for your thoughts and emails over the last week. You are awesome!