Thursday, March 12, 2009

In which I finally make what is probably an obvious connection

The past several days have been absolutely miserable. There was a joint in my body that wasn't complaining, and quite loudly, too. And I was nauseous. I was inflamed. You'd think the nausea would have clued me in, but I am stubbornly dense. Anyway, pain. Of the beaten to a pulp by giants and then rolled over by heavy machinery that won't get off me sort. I only have Darvocet for pain relief, because this bad of pain this much all over isn't an everyday thing, for which I am thankful. And even really bad pain can be ignored to an extent if I can stay distracted. Being distracted, though, is impossible when one wants to sleep.

Monday night, I finally realized that my head was also hurting, that someone was coming along every few moments and wailing on the right side of my skull, sending my eye shooting out the socket. Well, it felt that way. And that is when it dawned on me that maybe I ought to take a Zomig. It worked marvellously well. I actually fell asleep within an hour and slept through the night.

So. Hmmm. Now I'm thinking that my crapped out neck maybe leads to the migraines, and the migraines magnify every other distress in my body. It also helps that the pressure front that was bearing down finally broke into actual storm. However, since I can't command the weather, I will instead follow up on this migraine-joint pain connection.

5 comments:

Elizabeth McClung said...

I am glad you slept through the night and I am glad you have a possibility to follow up on which may lead to some positive things - I am very pro-good things for people. So I hope this works!

Anonymous said...

I've been seeing a chiropractor lately who focuses on the cervical vertebrae. Initially I doubted whether this would help the rest of my body - but it does.

Lisa Moon said...

Wow, I wasn't familiar with these medications, other than having read in your blog before about them.
There are people in my pain ed. class who suffer from migraines and such and one woman who has quite a lot of hyper-mobility issues... I'll be checking to see if these meds are available in Canada as we often discuss different medications...

Glad you were able to sleep and I'll be hoping the weather behaves more kindly toward you. :)

yanub said...

Darvocet is similar to Vicodin, and I think not available in some countries. As a pain reliever, it is about as effective as the NSAID indomethicin, which is a very effective NSAID, but is still an NSAID, with all the drawbacks that NSAIDs have. I really need to post about this topic, because the US is about to join the list of nations which do not have Darvocet and Vicodin available all because the sort of people who suspect that every pain patient is a liar and drug abuser have gotten their voice heard while we who use pain medications, well, obviously, we're all liars and drug abusers so why listen to us?

Zomig, now, I'm not sure what it does other than interrupt a migraine. I'm not sure that the pharmaceutical companies know what it does, either. When it works, you feel normal. When it doesn't work, you have a migraine. And you can't take it very often. If it doesn't work, it isn't going to help to take another. They are very expensive, and aren't supposed to be taken more than three times in a month. And they are more effective if you take them early in the migraine, rather than like I did. So there's a catch 22: Is this a migraine episode, or something else? If this is an episode, will it be severe enough that I should try to stop it now, or can I fight my way through it? How many Zomig have I used in the past 30 days? Isn't this a stupid time to have to make medicine dosage decisions?

There seems to be a big overlap between people who have hypermobility and people who have migraines.

yanub said...

Beth, thanks as ever for your supportive words.

Barbara K, I've seen a chiropractor before, and would again if I knew one I trusted to not do active manipulation. With joints like mine, active manipulation is almost always unnecessary and always potentially dangerous. Any good body worker, though, can often be helpful, which is just another reason why I ought to get busy and find a body worker I can trust.