Month in Review - June 2013

So June is over already and this is how June 2013 was for me.

As you can see, it's been a painful month!

The start of the month (the 2nd) was my one year wedding anniversary and to celebrate me and my long-suffering husband took a trip to the lake district from Fri 31st May to Sun 2nd June.  With travel being a trigger and a day trip to Bletchley and back the day before, migraine striking was inevitable and it arrived right on cue.
The  migraine arriving during the night in the early hours of the 1st with the pain waking me at about 4am.  The meds worked but they took what felt like forever but was actually an hour or so.  I was ok during the day when we tried to do the things we had planned but we didn't manage to do them all as I was feeling the fatigue of the migraine despite not having the pain.  The migraine then returned overnight, waking me again with pain at about 4:30am.  I then spent the day at about a 4-5 on the pain scale meaning we managed to go to one of the things I had planned but otherwise came straight back home.  Luckily I'd had the foresight to book the following day off work though when I took some time to rest and recuperate to make sure I was back at work the next day, which I was.

I then was able to celebrate two days in a row of being pain-free on the 6th and 7th but sadly this was the calm before the storm.  The weather suddenly heated up on Saturday the 8th and despite staying inside, this seemed to be my downfall as this triggered a migraine which turned out to be a very long migraine which I occasionally, but thankfully unusually, get.  My meds had seemed to work on the 8th but it started to come back during the day on the 9th and it didn't go away all week meaning that I wasn't able to go to work that entire week which was incredibly frustrating, especially as every day I expected that I would be back to 'normal' the following day and able to be at work.

I was meant to be going down to Kent with my husband that weekend but sadly I had to send him off on his own to see family and stay at home resting instead.  On that Saturday, the 15th, it then lessened over the course of the day ending up as a level 2 headache which was wonderful after the pain of the week.  Sadly this seemed to just be the migraine gathering some force before coming back with a vengeance then as it arrived and strong and angrily as it normally does on the Sunday.  I medicated it but once again it didn't take all of the pain away and so the attempt to abort it had failed and I had to ride it out again.

Unfortunately, this meant that I had had more than a week off work with one hugely long migraine so, whilst suffering the migraine, I had to go to my GP to get a doctor's note for my work and I was no longer allowed to self-certify after 5 days.  That trip made me worse and then I was made worse still when I had to attend the hospital for an appointment for my eye problem, which meant two hours there undergoing various tests and having my pupils dilated which was really horrific with a migraine.  It was therefore unsurprising that I wasn't able to go to work the day after making it a huge 7 working days in a row that I had to miss work and that means I've triggered the HR conditions for the number of short-term absences in a year (triggered after less than half a year).

I then got through the next 3 days at work with daily headache at low level for me but a pounding headache to non-migraineurs.  I managed to make it to the evening portion of a friend's hen do in the evening of that Saturday, the 22nd, but despite being on the J2O instead of the wine like everyone else, I paid for it the next day with another migraine; this time it was one of the right-hand side of my head which is usual for me as I usually get them on my left side.  I'd like to see if there are any patterns to my right-sided migraines so I've started tracking which side of the head they are on from this point.

That migraine was pressing in for the next couple of days but I held it off, despite being at work which was good. That Friday, the 28th, was then my birthday!  I had the day booked off work and I was really excited getting some fabulous presents from my nearest and dearest and my head even gave me a wonderful birthday present of a pain-free day!  I was so happy! I was so excited!  I was going to be punished!

Despite my husband repeatedly telling me to stop being excited (which is really annoying when you're excited but he's exactly right, which of course makes it more annoying! lol) I was excited, and I was a little too excited it seems.  With friends coming to stay for a small birthday party on the Saturday I was expecting the excitement of that party to punish me on the Sunday with a migraine but instead, the excitement of my birthday on the Friday punished me on the Saturday with a migraine, whilst everyone was at my house for a party for me!

So instead of being a social butterfly and chatting to all my friends, I was hiding away with one or two people so that it wasn't too overwhelming and I had The Brave Face plastered on me at all times.  I had to medicate a second time because the inability to rest and sleep after taking my first lot of meds meant it wasn't effective at aborting it but the second dose always makes me really spacey and I can't even remember some of that evening (like the kind of memory blanks you can have after getting very drunk).  The following day I limped along until everyone had left and collapsed in a heap of pain and it really felt like migraine had ruined my birthday this year.

So the month started with hope as the end of May was pretty good and I thought maybe it was my new preventative, Amitriptyline, helping me now, but I'm not sure it's doing anything at all for me after this month of pain.  I'm giving it 3 months to work though so there's a bit of time left yet for it to prove itself.  I really hope July will be coloured in much lighter colours that June was!!