lydamorehouse | (Reply)

From:

I saw this entry before the earlier one and I'm so sorry you both had such a difficult day, made more difficult than it should be by the pandemic, but it wouldn't have been a picnic in any case. Blargh.

I think serious expertise is a good idea.

I get migraines. Not sure my experience is relevant. To begin with, I take a beta blocker for my blood pressure. When I first began taking it, the migraines went away entirely for a couple of years. They would creep back and then for unrelated reasons my beta blocker dose would get raised and they would go away again. However, I don't want it raised any more -- it makes me feel that somebody turned up the gravity and I refused to let my doctor increase the dose a couple of years ago. Anyway, even though I do get the migraines, I don't get major pain while on them; sometimes I don't get pain at all.

I get lack of mental focus, mild aphasia, a generally very unpleasant wonky feeling, sometimes a little vertigo.

My main triggers are abrupt changes in barometric pressure, dehydration, and aspartame. I've had three classic migraines with aura and all the horrible trimmings, two from aspartame and one from dehydration after I failed colonscopy prep.

At some point I read an article about things migraine sufferers should be doing but aren't. The main one I could address was "treating seasonal allergies promptly." So I take Allegra if I get drippy, and this has helped cut down on the number of migraines. Staying hydrated or drinking a bottle of Gatorade (yuck) is also helpful. But there is not much you can do about abrupt changes in barometric pressure. Rising pressure isn't usually an issue, it's falling pressure that causes trouble.

I hope there might be a useful nugget in there somewhere. But migraines can be awfully idiosyncratic.

I'm very glad Shawn is all right for certain values of all right.

P.