Oh Where Oh Where Has Ms. Strainedconsciousness Gone?

Oh where, oh where has Ms. SC gone?

Oh where oh where can she be?

I've been in bed

With duvet o'er my head

As miserable as can be.

Yup, I had a migraine... For two days. TWO DAYS!

I've been feeling generally icky lately, nauseous, loss of appetite, difficulty concentrating, etc. I just chalked it up to an overdose of construction details, but apparently, that was too tidy an answer. No, in truth, I was suffering an aural migraine without headache. Except that aural migraines without headache often do include a headache, just not the typical OH MY GOD MY HEAD IS GOING TO IMPLODE kind of headache.

Migraines are not new for me. I've had them since I was 19. But they've never taken on this form. All last week, during lunch, I would visit WebMD and look at my symptoms on their handy symptom locator and watch as it narrowed down the symptoms to:

Migraine

Lupus

Lyme Disease

Aspirin Allergy

Apart from the tick in a jar Radio brought into the office, I have had no exposure to ticks, so Lyme Disease was out. I know I'm not allergic to aspirin. Lupus? Kind of far-fetched. But I didn't have the pounding headache I used to get with migraines, so I figured it was just hormones or something and tried to brush it off.

I slept a ton over the weekend - one of my friends accused me of being lame - and felt better Monday morning. Hooray! I could eat again! I could walk without feeling dizzy and feeling as though I would tumble down the apartment complex stairs!

My sister and I had discussed my symptoms Sunday evening, and she said that my symptoms sounded exactly like hers did when she was diagnosed with having migraines after multiple years of suffering from the exact symptoms I described. That was a good enough diagnosis for me, but I felt fine, so there was no need to worry about it.

Right? Riiiiiiight.

And then Tuesday morning, I woke up, which was my first mistake of the day. I felt awful, but again, I decided that I'd soldiered through the week before, and I could keep on marching this week. I went to work, was less than my usual effervescent self, and after an hour at my computer and no work to show for it, informed my coworkers that I had a migraine and was going home. They all looked concerned, and I left the office and crawled into bed.

But not before looking at myself in the mirror and realizing why they all looked concerned.

I had big purple circles under my eyes and looked like death warmed over.

Not good.

I slept all day Tuesday, except for 4 hours when I ate some pasta and worked a crossword puzzle and read for a little bit, and woke up Wednesday morning, hoping to be relieved.

I hoped in vain, so I called in sick again, slept for a while, went to CVS and bought some migraine medicine and ice cream and headed back to my apartment to hunker down for the rest of the evening.

One dose of the migraine medicine contains:

1. 500 mg of aspirin

2. 500 mg of acetaminophen

3. 130 mg of caffeine = 3 Dr. Peppers in convenient capsule form

I couldn't go back to sleep after I took the migraine medicine, which was initially mentally hard to digest, but the physical reality didn't really give me much choice. So ten crossword puzzles and a book later, I fell asleep at 3 am, just in time to get a good solid 5 hours of sleep before awakening for work Thursday. I made it through the day Thursday, but with a kind of groggy feeling, probably due to lack of sleep.

Oldsmobile has been very solicitous, probably because he knows how I feel (we're both walking medical texts right now). And I have an appointment with a doctor set up, albeit farther in the future than I would like.

So I guess for now I'll just keep a bottle of super-duper-migraine medicine in my purse. And a Dr. Pepper, in case I need backup.