PYHO: Diet and Migraines – A Month of GF/DF

15 May By

It has been a little over a month since I went dairy free and gluten free. When I started I really expected a change. I had test results that I could see that indicated issues with dairy. I thought, “finally this is it”.

But so far I don’t see anything good. My headaches have actually been worse. Granted, the barometric pressure has been conspiring against me as well so who’s to say where the failure lies.

Not to mention I’ve also been trying supplements to help my headaches and stabilize nutrient deficiencies at the same time. In other words I’ve changed a flurry of variables and am left with no positive results and no clear villain to blame.

Unless of course I just blame myself which is a favorite pastime.

So where do I go from here?

I am miserable. The chronic pain is exhausting and frustrating and the dietary restrictions are annoying.

I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long while that I just might have to eliminate virtually everything to see if I can make a dent in this pain cycle.  Go full on raw vegan for at least some short period to see if helps. To see if I can begin to identify any food villains.

But I have been afraid of feeling deprived. Of having nothing to eat. Of feeling like utter crap.

I feel that way now. So how much worse could it get?

I know it could be bad. I have attempted detoxes with food before and I end up curled up in the fetal position in horrible pain and pukimg my guts out.

Guess that means I’m pretty toxic.

Maybe I need to be simpler. Focus on what to add instead of what to subtract. I used to be good about having green smoothies but I got out of the habit. Maybe if I focused on increasing my fruits and vegetables. Have green smoothies everyday and snack on fruits and veggies. Increase my water intake.

It seems that would be gentler to my system and allow for moderation instead of deprivation.

I don’t know what to do.

I’m miserable and I feel like my body is screaming at me that it needs something but I have no idea what it is.  And I have no idea how to figure it out.

I wish I had some sort of reset button.  Some way to start over without shocking my system into rebellion.

Why can’t I find something that helps?  There has to be something.  Because I’m breaking and I need something to mend me.

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Side Effects Can Suck It

24 Feb By

sideeffectsOver the course of about 17 years of searching for the perfect medicines for my various ailments it has become abundantly clear that my body has serious issues with medication.  It does not particularly like when foreign substances are introduced to it.  And my body shows its dissatisfaction with my relentless attempts to cure what ails me by making any possible treatments worse than what it is treating.

Whenever you get a new medication it comes with a nice long list of warnings and possible side effects.  It is quite baffling that we have so many pills for various issues and they all have a lot of the same side effects.  Dry mouth, weight gain, weigh loss, dizziness, headache, tingling in your fingers, etc, etc, etc.  I mean, how crazy is it that I get a medication to treat my headaches that has headaches as a side effect?

I think it is worth mentioning that my own body has yet to choose a side effect like weight loss to tell me how much it hates medication.  This is one of the reasons I believe it is a plot against me.  Never do I get what might be a useful side effect.

So let’s touch on a few of the lovely side effects I’ve had the pleasure of enduring.

Headache

Like I said, this one is crazy.  Most of the medications I’ve taken are for preventing my Chronic Daily Headache so when I read over and over again that these meds can cause headache I just shake my head and sigh.  I’ve had a few that immediately make my headaches more frequent and severe which is exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to do.  Sometimes I’ve been told to wait it out and see if it is just something that will go away.  That’s one of the awesomely annoying things about side effects, they may only last a little while and so you are supposed to wait around and see if they get better and then you get the good effects of the medicine.

Dry Mouth

Honestly this one is the mildest one.  It does have a good aspect of making you drink more water which is good for everyone, right?  So naturally I’ve had this one maybe once or twice.

Fatigue

Seriously what mother needs anything to make her MORE tired?  I hate when I can barely get up in the morning, especially if the medicine happens to be for depression.  I mean what the HELL?  Shouldn’t something for depression make me bounce out of bed dancing a jig?

Dizziness

This particular side effect has been the bane of my existence for about 6 years.  After having kids, this one has been the most common side effect of pretty much everything I’ve tried.  I can’t tell you the number of times I have had to stop driving for weeks as I get past dizziness from one medication or another.  And just this last weekend I went to the ER because I spent hours trying to control the dizziness and get my blood pressure back up.  Of course they found nothing wrong so I’m pretty sure it was the latest migraine preventative.

Allergic Reaction

I guess I should consider myself lucky this one hasn’t happened more often.  About 2 months ago I broke out in a huge and INCREDIBLY ITCHY rash after dealing with 3 weeks of dizziness from a migraine preventative.  That’s right, I had one side effect I was waiting out for 3 weeks then WHAMMO, I’m hit with an allergic reaction that makes me quit the stupid medication.  What a waste.  And it took another week and a steroid to get the damn rash to go away.

Suicidal Thoughts

Honestly this one was the worst.  And it was due to a medication for anxiety.  How’s that for ridiculous?  Luckily I recognized that the thoughts were out of my ordinary and stopped the medication immediately which made my brain back to my version of normal.  But that was scary.

Now maybe what I should be getting from all of this stubbornness from my body is that some medication is not the answer for me.  I need to find a way to heal myself from the inside.  I think deep down I know that is the right thing to be working on.  But, of course, it is really hard to heal yourself from the inside when I feel like utter crap all the time.  It’s a paradox that you need to exert so much effort when you have so little to give.  Even though we all know that if you give that effort, you will get back so much more.

I’m working on believing that wholeheartedly and turning it into action.  It’s hard though.  Adding all these side effects into the mix doesn’t help either.

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PYHO: Sometimes you have to up your meds

10 Oct By

There has been a lot of struggle, tragedy and sadness lately.  Some close and some far.  I have a heavy heart for so many people lately.

For myself, I have been struggling as my anxiety and depression creeps back in.  Who knows which came first, the sadness I’ve been seeing or the sadness I’ve been feeling.  It doesn’t matter really.

I know that I have to step back and look at how I’m coping.  Sometimes I can handle a little extra stress and sometimes I just can’t.

Honestly I hate taking medications.  You would find that funny if you could see the pharmacy of crap I take for various things and my history of trying pretty much everything under the sun for my chronic migraines.  I seem to be über sensitive to the side effects of most things.  And, just for kicks, my body can come up with new and doctor stumping side effects.  Like when an ADHD medication caused frightening suicidal thoughts and my doctor had never heard of that happening before but once I stopped the medication, they were gone.

So I try to avoid changes in medication or supplements as much as possible.

But after crying in two different neurologist appointments, I had to admit that, sometimes, you just have to up your meds.

So at my next psyche appointment we talked about options and decided a small increase would be good.  It’s been about a week and a half and I can feel that it is taking the edge off a bit more that it was before.

I am still having nightmares though and trouble sleeping.  I feel like there is still a cloud that I can’t shake yet.

But we’ll see how it goes.  I have gotten pretty good a paying attention to my body and mind.  Writing out my thoughts and feeling in this space has helped me to understand myself better.

It’s a journey, this life thing.  Ups, downs, loops.  What a ride.

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Calm My Crazy: My Brain

28 Sep By

Yesterday I read a post over at Babble by the awesome Cecily Kellogg about living with her broken brain.  It really spoke to me because I could see myself in her words.

You guys know about my struggles with chronic migraines, anxiety, depression, ADHD.  I write a lot about the pain and emotions.  The never ending attempts at relief.

I can get pretty angry about it.  Cursing myself.  Feeling as if it is all my fault.  Hating my brain.

But Cecily spoke to me.  Reminded me that my brain is also wonderful.

My brain is logical.  It is inquisitive.  It makes me good at my job.

My brain makes me empathetic and kind.  Loving.  A good wife and mother.

My brain makes me who I am.

A strong woman who doesn’t give up.

According To Denise

Check out this post to find out more about the Calm My Crazy meme.  This weekly post is for me and for you.  A place to share our moment of calm.  Something that brings us a little peace and happiness in a world of crazy.


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I Needed This Today

28 Mar By

Hubby and I had a long talk last night.  The depression has crept up on me again.  I spend so much of my time and energy trying to balance between the depression and anxiety and chronic pain.  It is exhausting.  And sometimes I balance OK and things are fine.  And other times one of those weights I balance sneaks up and smacks me down.

I’m in a smacked down state right now.  The headaches have been worse (thanks Mother Nature) and my stress is at a staggering high.  The depression caught me off guard.  Again.  The anxiety is waiting in the wings as I sit in denial that my oldest stepson is going to go off into the world by himself to college in a matter of months.

So I’m struggling and I’m tired and I’m angry and I’m sad.

This morning I pulled my son’s schoolwork out and found this.

And it made me smile.

It made me feel hopeful.

It made me feel loved and appreciated.

And that is something I really needed.

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I love linking up with Shell.

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Depression and Anxiety and ADHD, Oh My!

14 Sep By

Since I started this blog, I have talked a lot about my migraines.  It has been about 15 years now and I’m really just spending a lot of time trying to deal with the pain.

But this post is about the other things I don’t tend to speak freely about.  Those things that even people who have known me forever may not actually know about me.

Why don’t I talk about them?

Well, because they are invisible to most.  They don’t have an easy way to explain them.

And I think people will think less of me.

It took me a long time to be able to talk to folks about my migraines.  Mine aren’t “classic”.  Because I tend to slip into what’s called “Chronic Daily Headache” and have some kind of pain pretty much all the time.  It is tough to explain that “this headache isn’t bad” and “this one is like an ice pick through my head” and “this one I can mostly function with”, etc, etc.  But I eventually didn’t care so much that ordinary people couldn’t understand or relate to what I was feeling in my head and that they couldn’t understand that I (nor the myriad of doctors, etc I’ve been to) did not know WHY I had this pain.

I just did.  It just is.  And I was finally able to just tell people that I was in pain and it had such and such effect this particular time and I was doing this or that to deal today.

But with these other things, I haven’t gotten that far.

I haven’t been able to say “Hey, I’m in the valley of a major depression right now so I can’t really give a shit about this or that” or “Man, I’m having an anxiety attack right now so I’ll have to deal with whatever you care about later” or “I’m sorry, I simply can’t focus right now so I need to go wind down and reset my brain.”

But I am attempting to get to that point by writing.  My beloved blog gives me a place to tell everyone what I am keeping bottled up inside.

So for the next few weeks I will post as part of the Things I Can’t Say Pour Your Heart Out meme and tackle one of these taboo topics.  I will pour my heart out with my experience.

And maybe, just maybe, I will be one step closer to feeling like it is OK for me to talk about them whenever I need to.

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