Well, here I am, resurfacing from what we'll call the 'twilight zone'. Since I arrived in Paris on Tuesday evening (3rd Jan), it's been an incredibly difficult week. My worries about possibly not feeling well enough to travel after my flu were unfounded and I made it here feeling really quite good, despite the long journey. I was so glad/relieved to see Leon at the Gare du Nord, and I felt positive and happy and better than I had for a whole month.
That lasted for about three hours.
Later that evening, I started feeling very tired and 'off'...just a little odd, really. By the time I went to bed I was starting to feel as if a migraine was starting, and indeed it was. I slept very little that night, feeling dizzy and weird, and unfortunately kept disturbing Leon too. Leon went off to work in the morning and I finally managed to sleep until late morning. I woke up feeling quite a bit better, and pleased that maybe I'd been able to stop it before it really got started. No such luck. It came back that afternoon and I spent the rest of Wednesday on the couch feeling really awful. Oddly, when I woke up on Thursday morning, I was a lot better and I had a pretty good day, just relaxing and pottering around the apartment (I've learned from experience that I must always take it easy after a migraine attack). We went out on Friday morning for a few hours, which was my first trip outside since arriving. While out, my head started throbbing and I noticed I was sensitive to light. I also felt somewhat weak and a little off balance. When we arrived home later that day, it hit me with full force.
I couldn't do anything. I felt dizzy, nauseous, sensitive to light and experiencing blurred vision and white flashes, accompanied by an incredibly painful headache and other bizarre symptoms. I guess that quite a few of you reading this will have experienced migraines and will know how it feels. If you haven't, you may be under the impression that it's just "a really bad headache". I can tell you that I've had many really bad headaches in my life and a migraine is a different beast entirely. When it's at its worst, you literally can't do anything. It's incredibly scary and you honestly feel as if you might die. I actually find that the pain is the least scary symptom. It's the dizziness, sickness and vision problems that fill me with fear. I feel incapacitated and as if I have no control over anything. I can barely eat, and despite the fact that sleep seems to be the one thing that helps, I find it hard to sleep as I can't relax enough, nor lie my head down without feeling dizzy and nauseous - not exactly conducive to good sleep!
Anyway, it got worse and worse, but I somehow managed to sleep a bit. But I then woke up at about 3:30am and completely freaked out. I felt worse than I ever have, and I was genuinely terrified that I was about to die. It sounds melodramatic, but if you've experienced migraine at its worst you'll know what I mean. It's hard to believe that you'll ever feel 'normal' again, or that you're not dying from a stroke/brain tumour/mystery illness. Leon tried to calm me down but I was so ill and so scared that he called the emergency doctor (something he'd been wanting to do all evening but I'd stopped him as I didn't want to have to deal with a doctor - it sounds silly given that I was so ill, but I just wanted to be left alone).
So at around 4:30am, a young French doctor with a brilliant grasp of English arrived and performed a multitude of different tests on me, including some quite bizarre ones! He confirmed I was indeed having a migraine attack, but other than that I was apparently neurologically 'ok' and didn't need to go to hospital for a CT scan (?) - I was ok to stay at home and just 'ride it out' with the help of some medication. He also examined my neck and apparently I have a problem with the muscles on the left side of my neck, which he believes are partially the cause of my attacks. I never knew about this, but it makes perfect sense - my migraines are almost always on the left side of my head. (He didn't know this fact until after he discovered the neck problem, so I'm inclined to believe he's right).
I finally started to feel better on Sunday, but even then I slept for about five or six hours during the day! I feel drained and even now, on Monday, I'm still not 'right'. But I'm taking it easy and trying to get well again - I've also been researching as much as I can about this condition, and came across this interesting article which really struck a chord with me, as I believe that my migraines are also related to anxiety, and it's no secret that I've had anxiety (or panic) attacks in the past (I'm 'holding' a lot of the tension from this in my shoulders and neck). I'm going to see my own doctor when I get back to the UK and try to get to the bottom of this once and for all. I need to address the underlying cause of the migraine and I hope we can do that. I have to remain hopeful and try to be positive even though I'm scared and feeling pretty down right now.
I hope that by writing about this and sharing my recent experience, it will maybe help someone else out there too and you'll know you're not alone. If any of you would like to share your experiences with migraine or any advice you have in dealing with them, I'd love to hear from you - please feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks. x
*Just so you know - I've changed my mind about the frequency of the blog posts and most of the time I'll be posting just once a week instead of twice. Twice a week, every week, is going to be too much for me. It's already shaping up to be a busy year - more on that soon! - and with my work schedule and current health problems, I want to be a bit kinder to myself. I'll try to post regularly, at the beginning of every week.
