My five minutes of whining and an informative article....

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

No, I think I'll skip the parenting talk...it still scares the crap out of me and I still am contemplating the reasons why lions eat their young (as a friend of my was sure to tell his children many times! lol)

The story behind the five minutes of whining. There is a woman, Jacqui Saburido, who appeared on Oprah a few years ago. She was given such a bum rap in life, but she had such a positive attitude and such a beautiful spirit that she made an impact on me. She said that she allows herself 5 minutes of crying and self pity a day, that's it, no more time to feel sorry for herself...Well I decided that today I would SHARE my five minutes of allowable whining (Lucky you!)

So, I was forwarded a VERY cool article link today. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-migraines-strike

I have to sheepishly admit that my attitude on seeing the email subject line and that it was an article on migraines made me think, "oh no, now I've got someone else sending me ideas on how to get better and the 'newest' wonder drugs that I was on 2 or 3 years ago..." I was wrong (sorry JD, but you don't know how many people, my entire life, or at least since I started getting migraines at 12 or 13, will xerox stuff, send me links, tell me about what worked for their brother, sister, niece or wife's cousin's husband!) a good goddess can apologize because I realize that every one of these efforts is out of the kindness of people's hearts and they truly do want to see me well so thank you.

For those who don't know me well, I've been a goddess all my life, but only really been puzzled since I had kids....seriously, I'm disabled because of migraines...I know, I know what some of you are thinking who haven't been there or done that or who even get them occassionally...how can someone be DISABLED because of a HEADACHE? Take some asprin, wish yourself better, gut up and ignore the pain, or click your ruby slippers together a time or two and pretend you aren't in Kansas.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but realize 1.) I have gotten 'classic migraines' since I was an adolescent. 2.) I have been keeping up with migraine research for as long 3.) I don't just get the 'occasional'
headache...that's what I got before I got pregnant and could hold down a career and be a good wife and mother, etc I get MIGRAINES (not headaches...I DO very much know the difference!) every FRICKEN goddess be damned day of my life and have for the past TWELVE YEARS....get that....12 years! I can count on my fingers the number of pain free days I've had during those years. I haven't had a pain free day in the last 3 years at all. I was overjoyed last month that I had a MORNING where my pain level didn't go above a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1-10.

On top of the migraine B.S. I have also had Fibromyalgia since I was 19...for years I could ignore the pain or 'work through it' but when 'working through it' involves raising blood pressure in your brain (bending over, exerting yourself in any way, etc) and increases the migraine pain past the bearable threshold, there is a tendency to JUST NOT DO IT....can we say PAIN.

So no, you can't get disabled from getting migraines....but yes, if you are one of the 2 people (I'm one of them) that I'm aware of in the nearest 150 miles who happens to have had their brain chemistry/function change to such an extent that they are getting these things EVERY day and has no let up no matter how many drugs they put you on or take you off or try again (I'll probably rant more about this later!) and if you happen to have another disabling condition that compounds your problems. Plus the ups and adds of high spinal pressure, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, now obesity, and the lovely new addition of disappearing Vitamin D reserves...you too could maybe ride the system and be bedbound in fricken agony almost every day of your life! (You can't tell that I get a bit PO'd at the way people treat me, can you?) Anyway, this concludes my alloted 5 minutes of allowable whining per day.

I truly do want to thank the friend that sent the article to me. I did learn some new things from it. I hadn't known some of the ins and outs of how the brain chemistry worked. I had discovered that epilepsy and migraines were related in ways the doctors didn't quite understand (many drugs now used for migraines were developed to treat epilepsy.) Anyway, very cool and interesting article for me...sorry if it bores you to tears :) goddesses like to get new information.

ttfn and blessings from a puzzled goddess