Waffles in the dark
Posted on
One day last week I was levelled by a migraine and reminded why it is that I don't like them. It wasn't that I'd grown fond of them or that I'd missed them. I'd simply forgotten how debilitating they can be. For those who have never had one, it's like being kicked in the brain by a whole chorus line of cancan dancers with timing issues. As migraine sufferers go, I'm fairly lucky. I'm not as lucky as those who don't get them at all, but definitely luckier than those who get them a lot. I probably get one or two a year at most. Until my most recent episode, in fact, I don't think I'd had one in over a year.
I've read a fair amount about migraines over the years. Such reading has almost always coincided with when I've had one. I'm rarely interested in finding out how to get rid of something I don't have. Perhaps if I read about an ailment in advance, I might be able to prevent myself from getting it. Unfortunately my love of more light-hearted literature makes cure more practical than prevention. It also gives me something to do on those rare occasions when I'm ill.
As I understand it, there are four phases for a migraine, though not everybody gets all four of them. I only ever get the middle two, and often I only get one of those. The two I've never had are called the 'prodome' phase, which happens at the start and the 'postdrome' phase, which happens at the end. I've never been one for warming up (or down) and with symptoms like nausea, general malaise and a feeling of unpleasantness in both phases I don't mind in this case.
For me, migraines consist of the aura phase and, if I'm unlucky, the pain phase. It always starts with the aura phase where I can't see properly. I get black and white flashing shapes either in the centre of my vision so I can only see around the edges and not directly in front of me, or around the edges so I have tunnel vision. Usually it phases from one to the other repeatedly. Imagine spending the day looking at life through a Magic Eye puzzle that keeps moving and you're halfway there.
The pain phase does exactly what it says on the tin. Last week, for example, the inside of my head felt like it was bigger than the outside of my head and neither side was happy about it. It's the sort of pain where everything you do hurts. For a while you gain the ability to feel your skull along with a sensation that there is something angry inside trying its best to get out. I've found lying down in a darkened room tends to be the best course of action once the pain takes hold. Horizontal hurts only slightly less than vertical, but after a point I'll take what I can get.
Which brings me to the title of the blog. When my most recent migraine arrived, I should have been spending the evening in a rehearsal room with my friends, preparing for a show later in the week. What actually happened was that I came home from work, lay down on my bed and waited for it to get dark. I didn't turn the light on. For sustenance, I ate waffles in the dark. I don't remember much else other than a lingering pain and an unwillingness to move too much or too quickly. I do recall, however, that while the pain had gone by the morning, the world felt an awful lot brighter the next day.