Thursday 1 August 2013

Month in Review - July 2013


So July is over now and I must say, in comparison to recent months, it felt great!
Here's the breakdown:





There's a lot of colour in there but it's not all bad.  The yellow is holiday and the lighter the colours the better and overall it's a pretty light-coloured month.

The first week of July was a very welcome relief from the daily headache I've been suffering so badly from the last couple of months.  Although it wasn't a pain-free week, most days were pain free and that felt fantastic!  The evening of the 5th was a migraine-creating recipe with running around playing laser quest in the heat and a later than normal evening having a meal afterwards and yet no migraine.  The next day was spent in Harrogate at with a friend at craft workshops and yet despite all the exertions of the night before and all the activities of the day, there was still no migraine. In fact, not event a headache!  A trip over to see my parents the next day on the 7th (wimbledon men's final day!) proved a little too much for me though or rather all of these things added together proved a little too much for me, and migraine finally arrived.  Funny how when it's only a week since the last migraine it felt like it had been a long time as I'd had a chance to actually have a life and I'd had relief from the daily headache!  My meds worked though and I was ok (although delicate) by the next day.

I had a week off work from 8th-12th July with my husband where we didn't take the time off for anything other than just relaxing at home and playing some board games with each other.  It was exactly what I needed to just completely destress and get myself back on a level footing.  My head seemed to agree as I only had headache on one day in the week so it really felt like a rest.  Sadly the last day of the holiday marred this by striking me with migraine after I went to Harrogate for a workshop to learn to knit but as my meds worked (though they always leave me delicate for the next few days) then I was successfully at work the next day, albeit with a significant amount of pain returning.

In fact I think the biggest thing to notice in this particular month of review, is how there are no dates with the big black angry outline which indicates an absence day from work.  I made it through the whole of July without missing any work days at all!  Something that I hadn't managed since March!

That week at work (15th-19th) was a more difficult one, with pain more days than not and running a review day for my team on a sunny day in a pod surrounded by windows.  I was all things that would usually add up to migraine but it wasn't until the Sunday (yet again, another Sunday migraine!) that I was hit by migraine.

By this point in the month, the daily headache was returning a lot, with more days in pain than pain-free days again but incredibly, despite another long, tiring and hot week at work, the last Sunday I escaped migraine-free!  This meant that the Monday morning was then not spent feeling extremely delicate with migraine rattling the bars of the cage I'd put it in like the other Mondays all month, but in fact just a (relatively) minor headache instead.

Just three migraines in the whole month of July and some respite from daily headache has been an incredible improvement on the last two or three months and I'm hoping this is an improvement I can carry forwards if it's because of the amitriplyline.

If it's because of the week holiday of doing nothing but relaxing at home then I have to wonder if I need to factor weeks like that into my year.  I have another week like it booked for November but that seems like a long way away especially if it's going to get worse and worse until that point. So I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that it's the amitriplyline helping me now and that things won't get as bad as they were again.

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