nags of a similar ilk

That headache I woke up with this morning was a migraine. I knew it was from the pattern of the pain (one side of my head, the left this morning), the intensity of the pain (not quite 'kill me now' but definitely no working out today) and the insiduous way it appeared. That I cringed at the sunlight streaming in from my bedroom window as I closed the drapes sorta rather sealed the deal, eh?

I wasn't sure about the arm numbness. I was hoping it was just from my arm resting funny on the desk.

But now that you're here, now that you're starting to steal my vision, slowly, surely, without mercy, I'm ready to give up and go back to bed. Kinda sad, really, as I was just getting into the groove of my work.

I'll have to try again this evening, I guess.

Not sure how happy the clients are going to be about this.

Well, I called Bob, Kris' dad, today. There's only so many days in a row I can spend in darkness, not moving, wishing for quiet, before every fiber in my body is going to scream for a solution to this ongoing problem. Three times in five months, I've had four in a row, and it's getting out of hand. If it's the wine, or even alchohol in general, fine, I'll stop drinking it.

When Bob called me back, he had some good dietary suggestions for me, which was what I was asking for. I was looking for an elimination diet, maybe to help me figure out what was my trigger. I thought I'd have to cut everything out of my diet and subsist on rice and beans for a while.

I was, thankfully, wrong.

Out of my diet is now: nitrates, nitrites, tyramine, chocolate, sulfites. When I asked how to determine if food has any of these in it, because, let's face it, except for "chocolate," the rest of them are sorta hard to figure out, Bob told me, "Avoid processes foods."

Okay, I can do that.

I've recently switched to a vegetarian diet, though didn't tell very many people about the change. I'm the easiest vegetarian you'll probably ever meet: if you serve me meat, I'll eat it. I like Andy's philosophy that (I'm poorly paraphasing here) wasting the animal is worse than killing the animal in the first place, so if it's there, better to eat it than refuse and have it thrown away. Or something like that.

However, my food choices have been remarkably fruits and vegetable based, even for me. I suspect Lisa would be somewhat pleased.

Update: Okay, after going to the store and buying a bunch of unprocessed snacks, I did the research for high level tyramine foods. I really should have done the check before I left. Now, I don't know if the auras and migraines are dietary triggered, but, if I had to guess, this could very well be my trigger. Check out the foods with tyramine: hard/aged cheeses (check), avocados (check), eggplant (check), oranges (check), grapes (check), nuts (check), soy (check), leftovers older than a day (check).

This is going to take some work. Though, honestly, anything has to be easier than that no meat, no wheat, no dairy, no soy diet I had five years ago. That one was hard.

I don't particularly like most alcoholic drinks. Most don't taste good, usually make me shudder, and have the unpleasant side effect of drunkenness. This has been true since I first started drinking in college. Sure, I could choke down a beer, or finish a (small) glass of wine, but likely as not I'd leave a half finished drink somewhere rather than finish it.

Wine coolers were a college exception, as you couldn't really taste the alcohol.

At my second job out of college, my boss, Wook (one of the best people on this planet, I should mention), didn't drink alcohol because he didn't like the taste. His declaration made me realize a person could, wow, CHOOSE not to drink alcohol because it doesn't taste good. The thought was revolutionary to me.

I stopped drinking, for the most part.

When I started dating Kris, not drinking became even easier, as he didn't drink either.

There was the occasional glass, like once a year or something, but few enough that I could count the number of alcoholic drinks on one hand, counting the number of sodas on the other.

And then I started working for V.A.

I swear, between Ariel and Pine, Aaron and Bharat, I was encouraged to drink more alcohol than any small person should be allowed to. And I drank it willingly, don't let my wording make you think differently. There's video were I redefine the Arabic number system when completely drunk. It is spectacular.

The alcohol was more the exception than the rule, though. The Whiskey Expo and Doyle's cocktail party are the big ones I can think of. I think in the last year I've left more glasses of wine and open-but-just-tasted bottles of beer for Kris and my mom than I ever even drank in college.

I've grown fond of the "take a sip, switch the glasses with someone who's finished" trick as of late.

So, when Kris, Heather and I went to Santa Barbara for Andy's birthday and spent most of the day tasting wine, I can't say I was particularly hopeful I'd find anything I like. I just don't like the tannins taste in wine, the bitter taste in beer, or the shudder factor of hard alcohol. I realize this, I'm good with it. I don't need anything but the slightest of sips.

And then the heavens opened up, pouring light and music and joy down unto the earth.

We found the Oreana 2006 Verdelho.

To say this is the best wine ever created might be a slight exaggeration IN YOUR BOOK. It's not on my blog. I immediately wanted to buy a case of the stuff.

Kris wouldn't let me, allowing me only 3 bottles.

They lasted about 2 weeks.

I kept asking Andy to bring up bottles when he journeyed north. I kept asking Heather to bring bottles back when she journeyed south. Eventually, I gave up on both those ideas, and found the winery's website, ordered 6 bottles online and had them shipped.

I managed to share one with friends at a communal dinner, where share means "take to the dinner and run away before it was opened, lest I drink the whole bottle myself, it's that good." The rest, oh, the rest are mine mine mine!

Of the remaining five, I've had two of them so far. The first bottle was with Mom, and took us two days to drink. The other bottle was with Mark and Megan this past weekend as they came over for dinner. Except, not really "over for dinner." More like, "Megan fed us in our own house" dinner. I'm still not sure how we managed such love.

There was about a 1/4 bottle left of the wine, so I had a glass of it on Monday night.

And woke up Tuesday morning at six a.m. with my right hand numb.

Now, at first I didn't notice the numbness as anything unusual. In my ongoing effort to sit up straight and get rid of that dowager hump that's forming on my neck, I managed to pinch a nerve in my shoulder, causing my left arm to go numb any time I do sit up straight (if ever there's an argument to slouch, that one works). So, I was half asleep and my hand was numb, whatever, right?

But it was my right hand. A realization I took a bit to make.

Aw crap.

I lasted until 2:30, when I was driving back from a meeting. I was about a quarter mile from home when I realized my vision was going: my migraine auras were starting up. I drove home as quickly as I could, losing only about 20% of my vision by the time I pulled into the driveway, and fortunately all of that along the outside periphery.

Phone call here, text message there, two Omega 3 pills, one magnesium, two Tylenol™ and one doggie in the bed later, and I was out to the world.

This is the second time in two bottles that I've had the bottom quarter or so of the bottle, then had a migraine the next day. The last one was that first bottle of Oreana Verdelho from last month. That migraine was also one of the big ones.

I'm very unhappy about this realization. Wine and cheese are indeed known triggers for migraines. I hadn't linked them to my migraines, though. It could be the bottom of the bottle, too, as I didn't have a migraine after dinner with Mark and Megan. It could also be the effect of food with the wine that helped me out.

Regardless, I find this whole connection completely unfair. I shake my fists at the sky! I mean, come on! I find the most incredible wine EVER, and it makes me go blind?

How fair is that?

I get migraine headaches.

There. I've admitted it. The world now knows I have migraine headaches, and they suck. A lot of people have "migraines," which are really just tension headaches, or stress induced headaches. Sucky suck for them, because, yes, it's a headache, but it's not really. Not REALLY a migraine.

I'm one of the lucky (yeah, in quotes, "LUCKY") ones who also have auras before a migraine. The percentage ranges from 12% to 25% of the people who have migraines who also have visual disturbances (auras) before the doozy of a migraine hits, depending on which study you read. I've tried to figure out how to tell people what I'm seeing, that I'm about to go blind and I have fifteen minutes to get someplace safe before I lose my sight, but most people just don't understand.

Here's how I describe what I see: imagine looking at something and not seeing borders. Like, look at my face. Now, you see the wall behind me. Imagine the border between my face and the wall gone, but in such a way that you don't notice the loss of the border.

If the wall is blue, and my face distinctly not blue, then it's obvious where the border between my face and the wall is. However, when I'm experiencing the preliminary auras of a migraine, that border is gone, EVEN BETWEEN TWO VERY DIFFERENT COLORS. It's gone, and I don't know it's gone. It's very disconcerting.

I've thought about doctoring an image to show what I see. The preliminary auras are mostly a lost of borders. After a short while, I see a bright spot, like looking at a really bright light (try the sun, but in a much smaller space), and the emptiness from looking at the bright spot and looking away. The brightness will grow, typically into a thin arc, with zig-zag iridescent lights. The arc and zig-zag lights are typical auras for most migraine sufferers.

But that doctored image...

Turns out, I took a picture that shows what I'm talking about.

If you zoom in and look at Sarah's face, the border of her face is blurred into the hair of the girl behind her. However, the color of her hair is the same as the trees in the background. Just looking at the close up of this section makes my stomach turn the way it does when I'm about to go blind from a migraine aura (which tells me, it's a learned response and not really part of the migraine, something I should work on stopping next migraine).

This is the closest I've come to what I see with the borders blurred. I'll have to work on the blinding zig-zag line next.

Jessica called me tonight as Kris and I were heading out to dinner. Doyle had called earlier (well, texted) with an invite for dinner and Dave & Busters, and we were heading out to join the group for dinner. Given that I had declined about six other invites from Doyle, and figured he'd stop inviting us out if we didn't actually accept one or two, I insisted Kris head out with me for at least dinner. He was too interested in WoW for us to actually spend an evening away from the computers, so dinner was it.

Jessica had had an okay day, and seemed to be checking in, see how things were going. For a moment, I thought there wasn't much particular point to the conversation other than checking in. Then, she busted out with, "I have to tell you, you're a freakin' genius."

I paused and smiled, wondering what I had done this time. "Uh, thanks?" was all I could manage, slightly confused when I couldn't figure out what I had brilliant accomplished.

"You don't seem too surprised."

"Yeah, well, I'm wondering the source of my brilliance."

"Ah, well..."

Turns out, it started when I was back in Indiana.

I had declined many of the items Jessica had offered me to eat or drink. I drank mostly water, declining the diet and regular sodas. I declined the Crystal Light, too. Except the water, the drinks offered had aspartame in them, and, as we all know, aspartame triggers my migraines. So, I declined.

The gum she was offering also had aspartame in it, so I declined it, too. Jessica asked why, why would I decline the gum she was offering. I took the package, flipped it over and showed her the Phenylketonurics Contains Phenylalanine message. "See that? Contains aspartame. It's one of my biggest migraine triggers."

Now, Jess has had essentially a six month long migraine. She copes WAAAAAAAY better than I would if I was going through a six month long migraine. I'm fairly certain she doesn't have the extra special aura bonus I do, but her headache is essentially one kabillion times longer than my headaches are, so she wins in the sucky-suck competition.

I hadn't explained why until she offered me the gum when she visited last week. When I explained, a little light went off. She's had this six month migraine, right? So, that adds stress. When she's stressed, she pulls out the gum and chews away. You see what's going on here, right?

When I explained why I didn't chew gum, at least none that have aspartame in them, she threw her hands up exasperatedly. Might that be her problem, too? One way to find out: she stopped chewing gum, and threw out all that had aspartame in it.

Five days later into the experiment, and she's migraine free. Five days gum free and five days headache free. It's like the clouds parted, the sun came out, the choirs started singing, and all was glorious again. Her life is just that much better.

And I am a genius.

A freakin' genius.