Griping as head goes *pound pound pound*

[breakinglight11]

After over a week of exhaustion and stress, I feel particularly lousy today. There is a low-grade headache in the top right side of my head that isn't as bad as it was last night, but still hasn't gone away even after a night's sleep.

I spent last night helping Jared work out the writing of his thesis. The first half was due today, and he used me as a sounding board to figure out the structure and flow. I agreed to read it once he was done and make suggestions as if I were the theoretical "mean, lazy, and stupid" reader that his professors warned him to write for. At some point I noticed I had developed a halo in my left eye. This has happened to me before and gone away on its own, so I wasn't too worried, more annoyed because I knew it would make it difficult to read. Then the headache set in, starting high on the right side of my head and spreading to just behind my hairline. I drank tea and grumbled as Jared finished the first part of his paper. The halo eventually went away, thankfully, and I read the paper and I think made some helpful comments. It really is a good work; I'm incredibly proud of him. Just one more section to go, and the second part is supposed to be easier than the first.

As I lay in bed that night, still headachey and now with nausea settling in, I wondered idly if I had a brain aneurysm. I was tired enough that I decided if I woke up dead the next morning, well, at least I'd get to sleep in.

Well, needless to say I did not wake up dead. Head still hurts, though, so perhaps my aneurysm is just a lazy-ass that's taking it's own sweet time to kill me. I feel zombie-like, quite useless for any form of productivity.

Traffic on my Livejournal has dropped drastically from last month to this. I am depressed about it. Maybe I've been less interesting. I feel less interesting, so it would not surprise me if my entries were becoming less so as well. I even look less interesting; I think the look of tiredness that's been dogging me makes me appear ten years older.

I think I need to take it easy for a little while. This week I shall do things to take care of me. I have a couple of minor social things I'd like to indulge in. I have a hot date, heehee, with blendedchaitea this coming Friday night that we've been meaning to have for a while, and I've been meaning to have Michael Hyde over for dinner sometime, so that would be an enjoyable way to spend an evening. Maybe I need to just take a little time to pull myself together. At least until this heavy, overwhelmed feeling goes away.

Comments

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

I may be using the wrong word to describe the effect, but by "halo" I meant a spot on my field of vision that was kind of blurry and shiny.

Gosh, a migraine? How scary. I don't believe I've ever had them before. Still, regardless, less stress and more sleep would help me a lot in any case. :-)

[valleyviolet.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right. Migraine "aura" effects can look like zigzags, glowing spots, flashing lines, wavy lines, or even a sort of weird kaleidoscopic effect over part of your vision (that's the one I usually see). Migraines aren't terribly dangerous unless you've had a drastic change in how often you have them. It sounds like this is more of an occasional thing.

A lot of people will have one or two headaches because of stress. My husband has had a handful in his life (we're talking like 4 ever) and I've lived with them as a chronic thing since I was in 2nd grade. If this is just a passing thing, it's no big deal, if it becomes more regular there are a lot of good options for treating them with minimal side effects.

In general, having a migraine isn't inherently doing damage to you, it's just miserable and unpleasant. You should take pain medicine though, because it helps to break the cycle of being irritated by sensory input (light, sound, etc.) that keeps the migraine going.