Apologies for disappearing last week. It is true that I was not happy about the election outcome (more about that in a minute), but that wasn't why I didn't post. I had an unusually busy week, and I just didn't have time to write something without staying up way past midnight-- which I'm trying to do less often these days. Partly because I'm old and I can't stay up that late anymore, but also partly because keeping regular hours, including having my morning caffeine at more-or-less the same time every day, might be a way to manage my headaches.
A couple of months ago, I told you that I was learning about rebound headaches (here and here)-- the headaches you get when you take too many medications. They are also known as "medication overuse" headaches. The only way to stop them is to stop taking meds. As expected, that turned out to be a disaster in the short term-- I spent several weeks feeling miserable.
But it has been a good thing in the long term. I didn't realize how often I was taking over-the-counter medications like Advil, Excedrin Migraine, Tylenol, and aspirin until I stopped doing it. I'd wake up with a headache and take an advil and two excedrin migraine. Three or four hours later, I might take more tylenol. Mid-afternoon, I'd take two or three advil. Somewhere in mid-August, I stopped all of that. I take prescription migraine meds if my pain level gets up over 7 or so, but other than that, I don't take anything.
It's the opposite of what I used to do. I used to go through all kinds of mental games and med-taking "strategies" to put off taking my prescription meds. Try this combo, try three more of that, maybe if I take two aleve before bed, maybe if I take advil every six hours so it never wears off. I would get a few hours of relief, but I was still having way too many headaches.
Now I do the opposite. When I have a migraine (which I define as a headache that gets up to 7 on a 1-10 pain scale), I take my prescription meds. Otherwise, I don't take anything. The good news is that even though it took 6-8 weeks, now when I don't have a migraine, I feel much better, and the low-level headache that I had pretty much all the time has stopped. I hardly ever take over-the-counter pain killers anymore. So that was definitely worthwhile.
But I'm still having migraines. I just feel better in between. So I don't know what to tell you. I'm still figuring this out and probably will be for awhile. I've been pretty consistent with the food things I was avoiding before, but so far that hasn't seemed to make a difference. In the grand scheme of things, two and a half months isn't that long, so it's probably too soon to say.
I even bore myself when I type these, so I've decided if I want to talk about migraines more in the future, I'm starting a series called "Migraines on Monday" (love a good alliteration). That way they will be easy to find if you're interested, and easy to skip if you're not.
So about the election. There is a lot of triumph and even jubilation in the air around here. But I think all they've proved so far is that they were able to convince 75 million people that electing Trump would make their lives better. Now they've got to actually do it. I have no patience with the people who think that winning the election was the end game. It's not a game, it's our country.
Anyway. If I avoid the news, I can hope it won't make much difference in my everyday life, and I can keep reading too much for escape. For me the key seems to be to narrow down my focus to the situations and people that are right here in front of me.
And really, that's all we can ever do. We don't know what's going to happen, but some of what happens might be good, maybe even amazing. A very petty part of me wants him to fail so I can say I told you so, but my better self would be so happy if he proves me wrong. It would be better for everyone if he steps up and does a good job. And anyway, as important as the President is, he is not everything. There is room for making a difference. ..... That's what I keep telling myself.
That's probably more than you wanted from me. Have a good weekend. We're off to Houston of all places, for the wedding of one of my nieces, but it's only a 4-day trip. I just remembered I have a good Houston story from twenty years ago but it will have to wait till another time because our plane leaves at 6am and it's already late.