Again??!!

The biggest problem with a migraine is that it will not work within your time frame. If I could plan for the visit of a migraine, I would pull out the calendar and circle a date that could work for both of us. But that has never happened.

Sunday night was the worst possible night for a migraine. The migraine medication would interfere with my sleep, and I really needed my sleep Sunday night. So when I started feeling the headache just before bed, I declared It Must Not Be, and I went to bed without the medicine.

Lying there, feeling very sleepy, I could meditate. Focusing on my brain very very carefully, I could make the pain dissipate as long as I could hold my focus. Long enough to fall asleep.

Turns out you cannot meditate in your sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I awoke when a drill bored through the back of my right eyeball.

OK. I guess will-power was not enough. I got up, fumbled in the dark for the bottle, fumbled in the dark for some water, and finally swallowed the migraine pill, eyeball screaming in agony. Then I fumbled in the dark back to bed, and lay down, throbbing, waiting for the medicine to take effect.

My body very much wanted to be asleep, but the pain in my head would not allow it. I began dreaming of riding the train lines around Melbourne. But with every frequent stop someone pounded a screw driver into the back of my eye.

South Morang. BAM!

Epping. BAM!

Cragieburn. BAM!

Kooyong. BAM!

Tooronga. BAM!

Rolling over gently, I understood that I was going insane. I found it very discouraging that insanity hurt so much. I had expected it to be more freeing.

I had to wake myself up to meditate again, to tell my brain that in fact, there was nothing drilling into the back of my right eyeball. Nothing, brain!

Eventually the train lines gave way to the flickering light of thousands of strands of fiber optic cables, their tips dancing in red and purple behind my eyelids. In a moment of lucidity I realized that this is what life would probably be like when my brain had worn itself down into the late stages of old age. Full of vibrant color and pain.

And then I realized that I was going to throw up. And if I threw up, I would lose the pain medicine and I would be stuck all night with the screw in the eyeball. So I focused again on breathing.

Breathe slower!

And rolled over and focused again.

Even slower!

And slowly, slowly, the interminable night crawled along and the next thing I knew I was asleep, really sleeping, dreaming that I had to pee really badly. But no matter how many times I checked out the public facilities, nothing seemed to give me needed relief. Why did I still have to pee?!!

Oh. Because I was asleep.

That thought did it for me. I woke up, took myself off to the real bathroom, then crawled back into bed.

Checked the head.

Not too bad! Just a little residual throbbing.

Checked the stomach.

Not bad at all! Almost no nausea.

Stretched out a little, congratulating myself on a migraine finally averted.

Rolled over to go back to sleep. And my eyes popped open. And stayed there. Wide awake.

Why am I awake?

Oh yes. Caffeine in the migraine pills. That's why I felt no more pain and nausea. Because the blood vessels in my brain were all comfortably dilated once again! Blood humming through my thinker, causing all sorts of thinky thoughts. Think think think.

But not at this time in the morning, brain! Don't you understand that I need to sleep???!! That this is a Very Important night for sleeping?

I almost gave up and got up.

But then I decided that it was probably better for my body if I pretended  to sleep. So I lay in bed, breathing, listening to the thinkiness in my head, wishing away that last little throb, and pretending I was asleep.

I pretended all the way through the crack-of-dawn call of the kookaburra, off on the other side of the park.

I pretended while I listened to the first train of the morning clackety clack far away by the river.

I pretended through the rattle of the earliest morning trams, early morning bell.

I pretended after the magpies began serenading the first traces of sunlight. And the noisy miners joined in. And the wattle birds.

And I stayed there and pretended all those hours until Tim's alarm went off, six-thirty a.m., and he stretched and smiled and asked, oh so innocently,

"How did you sleep, Love?"

I know what it will be like when I am old and insane and in pain and screaming in frustration at those poor dear nurses who are trying to get me up for the day. I pity them. I pity poor Tim.

Good morning, Monday.

Happy first day of the semester!

Happy first day of teaching, ever, in Australia!

You're going to be AWESOME!