Tag: migraine

More Imaging to Come

The spot in my brain MRI is probably just a cluster of blood cells. It doesn’t look like a cancerous tumor but we will need more imaging to know for sure. I’m going to have an MRI with contrast and a CT scan at some point in the near future. I’m just waiting for my health insurance to approve the orders. I’ll also need to do follow ups in the future to make sure the spot isn’t growing.

The diagnosis also includes that this likely has nothing to do with the migraines. That means I have to meet with the neurologist at some point in the near future too. The whole point of this was figuring out the migraines after all.

So now you all can look forward to more boring, obnoxious posts about my teeny tiny little brain. Fun fun fun, kiddies.

Tough Morning

My stomach is being an ass this morning (heh, biology puns… love ’em!). I took my pills and had a few ounces of water and that set off the nausea. It was mostly spitting up foam, but there was a little bit more included in the mess. Gross, with a capital Gross, right?

I waited about half an hour and then had a protein bar. It’s left me with some real gas and a little more foam. Here’s hoping this wraps up soon so that I can have a less annoying day.

Let’s also keep our fingers crossed that we remain migraine free for another day. I may have a little news on that front but there will be a couple more doctors appointments before we know for sure. It is likely nothing but let’s find out so that we can move on, okay?

Hooray for health!

Woz

I saw this while stuck in traffic this morning.

Do you think that’s really Steve Wozniak?

I was listening to a tech podcast yesterday that said Woz likes to play polo on segues. Is that true? Can anyone get in on that or do you have to be an 80’s tech legend?

I kinda wish I still had my old Apple IIe. Not because I would still use it, just because it’s legen-wait for it-dary, legendary.

Side note, the in the office migraine is still a thing, but it’s very much on the mild side, thankfully. There is a headache and some brain fog, but it’s manageable and it isn’t stopping me from working. The vision issues lasted about half an hour, and that was rough, but the pain isn’t debilitating at all. Here’s hoping it clears completely at some point today, or at least doesn’t get any worse.

New Working in the Office Wrinkle

I think I am having a new working-in-the-office experience.

So far any time I’ve had a migraine I’ve either been at home or in a hotel room. I haven’t been out in the wider world when the first symptoms hit for any of them.

Until about half an hour ago.

I’m in the office today. Some one actually asked me how the migraine situation has been going and I said I haven’t had a problem in the last couple of weeks. Two minutes later I was wondering to myself why everything on the right side of my vision was too blurry to see.

Shit.

Migraine in the office… let’s see how this goes.

Unrelated, here is the last thing I saw before I left this house this moring.

217/365

Better Today… So Far

As expected, after a migraine on Tuesday and a bad gastric bypass stomach on Wednesday, I feel pretty good today. A little warn out but mostly okay. I drank a nice chunk of water while getting in my exercise this morning, and then had a protein bar breakfast afterwards. No issues so far. I overslept a little and I am still tired but I think that’s to be expected.

I have three hours of sick time this morning. I’m going to see my primary care doctor to talk about migraines and see what I need to do to try and get it all under control. I had one on the drive down to Florida just after New Year. I had another one, a minor one, on our last night on that trip. I think I had one in February, but was it two? I had one on the first night of the kids’ spring break. That was March 10th. Then the last one on March 21st. I don’t think this qualifies as chronic, or regular, or whatever the correct medical term for “lots and lots” might be. It’s enough to scare the shit out of me though. I mean, to quote Woody Allen, my brain? That’s my second favorite organ!*

Okay. Time to go start my morning. Shower, shave, dress, go see the doctor, go to work, listen to a lot of Peter Garbriel and Steve Hackett and try to talk myself either into or out of going to see them both in concert in the fall.**

*Quoting Woody Allen bothers me. It was bad enough when he cheated on the mother of his kids with her adopted daughter, but at least they are still together so we can argue that as gross as the relationship is it was apparently something along the lines of real, or if not real then lasting? I don’t know. I can’t get past the child molestation allegations though. I haven’t watched one of this movies since hearing about that, even though there have been a couple that I really wanted to, and some of his early 70’s movies are among my favorites ever (including the movie the above quote comes from). I try not to quote him the way I did back in the 90’s when I couldn’t go a full sentence without dropping something of his. They still slip through now and then when they fit too perfectly to ignore. I feel disgusting every time though, in case you were wondering.

**Peter Garbriel at the TD Garden in Boston on September 14, 2023. Steve Hackett at the Wilbur Theater in Boston on October 12, 2023. Like… how can a 70’s Genesis fanatic say no? Both of them within one month? I’ve seen Steve Hackett once, in one of the last shows I went to before the pandemic, back in September 2019. I’ve never seen Peter Gabriel. I’ve never even investigated the possibility before. I’ll never see Genesis in any of it’s forms as Phil Collins is physically unable now and there’s no way they’ll tour without him. My chance to see all five of them evaporated in 2007 when Gabriel backed out of the proposed Lamb Lies Down on Broadway reunion tour, which really never seemed like something he would have done anyway. Still… I’ve only seen one of the five of them live, and the chance to see two of them within a short space of time just seems like destiny in a weird sort of nerd way.

Week 46 Weigh In

Things are getting weird now.

I posted about my bonus weigh in on Sunday, three days ago. I was down 2.8 pounds after having been up at least a pound each of the previous two Wednesdays. Yeah, I am cheating on my weigh in schedule. Wanna make something of it? I didn’t weigh myself on Monday, but I did on Tuesday and I was down a lot. From Sunday to Tuesday I was down a massive 2.2 pounds. Wow! I didn’t record it on the spreadsheet or on my iPhone. I left it officially unofficial. When I weighed myself this morning for my regular Wednesday weigh in I was up 0.4 pounds since Sunday. That’s half a pound since Sunday, which means I was up 2.6 since yesterday.

Oh boy. I am at 216 even, which matches where I was on March 4th at the 10 month check in, which is also where I was hoping to get back to after last week. What a world, right?

BMI is 26.3 again. Total since surgery is 215.4 again. Total since first check in is at 236 even again.

Yesterday turned out to be a tough day with yet another migraine. I did what I meant to do the last time I had one, which was a week ago last Friday, and made an appointment with my primary care. It was tough to do through the partial blindness and the crushing headache, but I managed. I have an appointment for tomorrow morning. We’ll see how it goes. I expect it to just be a check in that sets up referrals to other doctors, but we’ll see. Let’s hope there is a placebo thing where now that I’ve taken the first baby step toward dealing with this it just goes away. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I had another issue last night as well. I tried to stay up through the headache but I fell asleep on the comfy chair in the living room. After about 45 minutes I got up and went to bed. I slept there for about an hour and then got up and went back to the living room. My head was much better, though still far from all better, and I wanted to spend some time with Jen. We ended up going to bed around 9:30, and I packed it in around 10:00. I woke up about three hours later and couldn’t get back to sleep. The headache was gone and in it’s place was a stomach ache. Shit. I was in and out of sleep until about 5:30 when I finally got up. I drank a water bottle while getting my jogging (yogging) in, and the stomach ache lessened but didn’t go away. I had two protein bars on the drive in to work and that mostly cleared things up. I expect it will come back again as time and digestion do their things.

Yesterday turned into a shitty day. Today is better, but still shaping up to be shitty in it’s own way. Yippee.

At least I still weigh less than I did in my last two weekly check ins. I’ll take that as a win.

Another Migraine

I went 10 days without a migraine headache. The streak is over though. I had about 40 minutes without being able to focus my eyes. That seems to be passing, thankfully. Unfortunately I am now in the massive headache stage. I need to fight through the next 45 minutes and get through the work day. We’ll see how I feel at that point.

I fought through the vision phase enough to book a doctors appointment for Thursday morning. Fingers crossed we figure this bullshit out.

I need two hours of stand time to close my third and final apple watch activity app goal. I need about 20 more ounces of liquid to hit that goal, and 25 grams of protein to hit the food goal. I also need to have two more calcium pills, which have been really tough for the last couple of days.

Shit.

Dirty Window

DSC_1117

It was 6:30am. I was about to start my morning fake jog (yog) when I looked out the insanely dirty window and saw that the stormy looking sky through the trees looked super cool. In the four seconds it took to pick up my camera the cool sky went away and I was left with this awful picture through an unbelievably dirty window.

It was worth a shot, I guess.

So I had another migraine last night. I was trying to cook some spaghetti. I reached out to turn on the burner and realized I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t the center of my vision that was missing, it was the right side. Just gone. The headache hit me a few minutes later and it was pretty bad. I laid down a little after 6:00pm and didn’t get up again until about 9:30. My eyes were okay at that point but I still had a nasty headache. I went back to bed a short time later and didn’t wake up until almost 5:00am. There was still a mild headache but it seemed manageable. When I got up to exercise I took some Tylenol and now, an hour later, I am feeling okay.

That’s three migraines in two weeks. I’ll be calling my doctor on Monday. Enough is enough, folks. I’m pretty scared about all of this.