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The Middle Way

~ A journey between extremes

The Middle Way

Category Archives: Migraines

like your life depended on it

26 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Migraines, Poetry, Writing

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each word draws the poison
suffering and anger leach
angst and puffed the same
the way I rid yourself from me

ink lathered in blood on page
tear-soaked paper scraps
shriveled napkins tinged with rye
a collective act to ward off life

Strobe Vision

20 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Healthcare, Mental Health, Migraines, Open mind, Psychedelics, Quantum

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This particular migraine has been going for a couple of days now. The other night I walked into a dark room and for the first time during a migraine, I experienced what we used to call “strobe vision” back in the neighborhood. Strobe vision is just like it sounds. There’s just this flashing light on the outskirts of your vision all the time. It’s just there pulsing out in your periphery, just enough to mess with you. And in complete darkness, it’s quite the light show. Back in the day, we used to get it when we dropped acid, or ate some other psychedelic. It was a common enough experience that we even gave it its own name. That tells you something, I guess.

So, with everything I’m reading these days about migraines and alternative treatments, it has me wondering what areas of my brain these little electrical storms called ‘migraines’ are screwing with. And it sure makes me wonder even more than usual about psychedelics.

Making Flippy Floppy

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Brain Droppings, Depression, Healthcare, Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Migraines, Recovery, Uncategorized

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Today I woke up with an even worse migraine than I went to sleep with. This one has a roller coaster attached to it. It has been it hijacking my vestibular system and turning them into a rocking horse with afterburners. On it, it will ride a glorious steed to Valhalla on.

Days like today make me consider every little factor just to decide if so should take the day off sick, or should I force myself to power through it. I have found that, depending on how freely I can treat the symptoms dictates how well I can function. Since there isn’t a “cure”, I’m really left either treating symptoms, or working on prevention.

Prevention is out the window once the storm hits (outside of taking note of any factors that may help you avoid migraines in the future), now it becomes triage time. It’s pretty much always triage time when one hits. Right now is one of those. Enough for now…

So, what’s been up?

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Brain Droppings, Cannabis, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Grief, Growth, Human, Love, Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Middle Way, Migraines, Open mind, Pain, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Writing

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This used to be a cohesive blog to some extent, until a few years ago. A few years ago I started to get migraines.

Actually, based on what I now know about migraines, I guess I’ve had them for most of my life. So the fact that I say it the way that I do means they got pretty bad. Bad enough to have screwed with every part of my life, in one way or another.

I always loved writing, but as the migraines got worse, the ability to string two thoughts together has gotten more difficult. Add to that the fact that most of it is written on a tiny little phone screen, and I fat-finger things when I trying to ride an epiphany and get the words out as fast as they roll through.

Then there was this thing I learned about that can go with migraines, called aphasia. I can ‘see’ exactly what it is that I want to say, but its word isn’t with it anymore. When I am writing and it happens, I give up. In daily life, I just come out with weird shit, like referring to a cutting board as ‘the under-the-knife block’. I get frustrated because I want the writing to be good. I’m starting to not care about that as much as i used to. Fuck it. If my typos bug you, there plenty of other blogs you can visit.

I’ve written a lot, but I think I deleted even more.

Poetry has helped me though. Because I don’t have to string thoughts. I have to evoke images and feelings, and tie them together in some sort of dance. And so, that’s been the majority of what I’ve been writing.

Many times I have tried to write about what I had been going through, only to delete it the next day when everything seemed to change again. If you know someone suffering migraines, you know what that means.

Much of it is related to chronic pain, and so a great deal of this involves dealing with that, when I wasn’t in migraine. And often with both at the same time. Although migraines tend to take over the show. Back pain is kind of like a guy who follows you everywhere playing a harmonica. He would be obnoxious and drive you crazy, right? But imagine if he were to then follow you into a Lou Reed concert or something. If you were even able to hear him, even then he would at best be mildly irritating. Migraines are like that. They’re so loud, they drown everything else out around them.

And with pain, comes pain management. And with pain management comes medicines. And I am in recovery. And it’s at that point that Pandora’s Box comes apart at the seams, as the scotch tape repairs let go again.

That’s been the juggle lately, anyway. Or at least it’s a good jumping off point for a few things.

Frunobulax

12 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Cannabis, Healthcare, Mental Health, Migraines

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I am currently going through an extensive list of normally successful* remedies that I use for migraines, on a massive f**king cluster headache that I was having…

The problem is that clusters got so close together that it morphed into some sort of super-migraine-cluster-headache-mutant-freakazoid-thing, very reminiscent of world threatening monster Frunobulax, that Frank Zappa refers to here in ‘Cheepnis’.

Anyway, I am out of ideas and cumulative substances for a single evening. I will now lie here like a bird that just flew head-first into a picture window.

Frunobulax, the Cluster/Migraine

I did it…

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Migraines, Politics

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I made it to vote. Cloudy and overcast and me in sunglasses. Lots of ‘WTF?’ looks for that one. Can barely get to the polls because some candidate is circumlocuting to a gaggle of spotlights. Throw up arms like a vampire and grumble for them to let me get by so I can actually vote.

If I can get there today, I’m sure you can too!

Primary Day

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Healthcare, Migraines, Politics

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Wake up at about 11:45 PM for an unknown reason. Decide to watch Dixville Notch vote at midnight. See 5 people check each other in to vote. Same billionaire wins both parties primaries. Lose faith in humanity. Try to go back to sleep, have trouble. Wake up again at 5:30 AM with a migraine that rivals some of the worst I’ve ever had. Wonder out loud (in colorful language) how I can drive to work today, let alone vote in a fucking presidential primary. Realize my problem is some sort of representative microcosm of American healthcare and politics. Lose a little more hope. Post about all of it in the hopes that I can convince more people to vote to compensate for everyone who can’t, or won’t, or who’ve been disenfranchised. Proceed to lay on couch while Bruce Cockburn’s ‘Call it Democracy’ bounces around inside my head.

Please get out and vote. Thank you

07 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Medical Marijuana, Middle Way, Migraines

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As I’m lying here on my side with a migraine, the left side of my face is on a pillow and I’m facing the back of the couch. It’s at this point that I notice that the area my left eye is focusing on appears to be pulsating in an out of focus in perfect time with my heartbeat.

That’s normal, right?

…oops

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Middle Way, Migraines

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I just experienced dizzying vertigo, and… finally… auras for the first time. Awesome!

Fucking Jingle Bells…

I found something! Wait… oooouch!

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Middle Way, Migraines

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I am going through a migraine. And I’m having terrible tinnitus. Well, I just found a spot on my temple, that when I press it, alters the pitch and volume of the ringing. I just played myself Jingle Bells inside my head. I now have a blinding migraine but I am still attempting to typing this out while I laugh at myself.

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