all graine-y

today i am feeling very well.

yesterday's post was written about an hour into a migraine. its fairly typical of the terrain an hour in. typing it two or three hours in, as it nears full-strength, is unthinkable.

while its not a subject i talk about at length much - socially i avoid broaching it if possible - migraines have been a fact of life for me since I was 15 or so. for over 15 years, i've experienced at least monthly, generally weekly, and even daily episodes, ranging from 6 to 12 (occasionally longer) hours in duration.

a migraine is a cluster of symptoms. they include (for me):

1. sensitivity to light, noise, movement, and conversation. exertion, even intellectual, quickly results in intensified pain.
2. nausea. but, for moi, never vomiting.
3. constant aching and throbbing pain, accompanied by feelings of heat and pressure, along one side of the head, from the eye socket, over the top of the head, down the back of the neck, and along the shoulder, with some lesser pain and tightness in the shoulderblade as well.
4. wide perceptual and emotional shifts accompanying "dealing" with and accomodating the pain, and its accompanying demands (go slow, do nothing, turn off lights, avoid distractions, stay with your body, don't speak, do not wander into thought, avoid activity and bend with the knees only, head and neck held straight up)

these classic symptoms, for me at least, are accompanied by (when i notice):

1. -tightness/contraction of the gut. this creates a center of further pain, and perhaps predates the flaring in the upper body.
2. -if i raise my arms, i become conscious, as trad. Chinese medicine predicts, that the pain travels down the length of the afflicted side's arm.
3. largley involuntary shivers and twitches along the neck-shoulder-arm route.

Migraines alternate hemispherally. If today, your left side aches, when you get your next one, it will target the right. Western science is unsure as to the causes of a migraine, it is a hotly contested arena of research and pill-patenting. An inflammation of blood vessels in the brain was generally agreed upon as precursor, but now the focus is more neural, and the role of the brain-stem is being investigated. Migraines also come with or without auras. For more on this (science!) side, check here. A lovely sample quote:

The trigger of the migraine may be overactivity of nerve cells in certain areas of the brain (for example, the raphe nucleus). Dilation of the blood vessels is now known to be caused from chemicals released from nerve terminals and inflammatory cells. Occasionaly a migraine can be triggered by large amounts of emotional tension and stress.

Wading further in the same articles brings the word prodrome: an early symptom indicating the development of a disease, or indicating that a disease attack is imminent. "

In Trad. Chinese Medicine (TCM), a migraine is an intense form of Liver meridian imbalance. It is the body's response to shut down the system through disabling pain, in a way like one turns off the water to re-callibrate the flow. The bitter element harmonizes the liver (most herbal liver medicines are concentrations of bitter herbs - thujone in wormwood/absynthe catalyzes the alcohol high in a markedly diff., more lucid direction) and the bland/sweet/salty diet of Americans comes along with a high rate of alcoholism and blood diseases (the liver births and grooms the blood).

"Migraine sufferers usually develop their own coping mechanisms for intractable pain."

The list of what I have tried is long, and varies depending on the vintage. Aside from OTC painkillers, I've tried over the years: traditional yoga, alochol, green tea, rosemary, meditation, feverfew, walking, hot showers, naps, akido, weed, tibetan yoga, immersing myself in water, iceubes, facemasks, acupuncture, massage, eating, drinking water, lying down on the floor in the dark and groaning, etc.

Believe it or no, I have never sought a western doctor's advise or treatment on migraines. When I told - as a teen - my eye doctor about them (without using the classic "migraine" label) - he was uninterested, having ascertained that that didn't sound like a symptom produced by the prescription. And I am not a fan of expensive experimental drugs, although, for once, I have insurance.

"Sumatriptan and related selective serotonin receptor agonists are now the therapy of choice for severe migraine attacks that cannot be controlled by other means. They are highly effective, reducing the symptoms or aborting the attack within 30 to 90 minutes in 70-80% of patients. Some patients have a recurrent migraine later in the day, and only one such recurrence in a day can be treated with a second dose of a triptan. They have few side effects if used in correct dosage and frequency. Some members of this family of drugs are:
Sumatriptan (Imitrex®, Imigran®)
Zolmitriptan (Zomig®)
Naratriptan (Amerge®, Naramig®)
Rizatriptan (Maxalt®)
Eletriptan (Relpax®)
Frovatriptan (Frova®)
Almotriptan (Almogran®) "

In TCM, its noted that simply eradicating a symptom, and not attending to the root factors that lead to that symptom arising, will drive the disorder deeper. In neuropsychology, the brain stem, whose "malfunction" or "over-sensitivity" may result in an episode, is the seat of the ddepest, most primal emotions, including fear and aggression. In TCM, a symptom is a node in a web - it is not causally identical to another subject's instance of a similair system. Differing systems may yet inflame the same node. So tracking the web, its relations, in my life becomes the work. Not sure how well I have done at it though, I am more Inspector Clouseau than Sherlock Holmes.

While they respond to care, and to my surrender to their seemingly inhuman, obliterating agenda, they do not respond very predictably. But letting the pain hold center court, abandoning any agenda I might have besides suffering and caring for my pain-wracked body, is rewarded, and the pain changes, subsides, sometimes even ceases. Sometimes, in its wake, there's a palpable, if subdued hush of ecstacy. But even the slightest weariness or premature excitation over its departure, and a migraine will steadfastly return. I'm thinking of how dominant males mark their territory, and patrol it, squashing challenges - its a lot like that, that sense of resistance is futile. And the shit is intense - life is very vivid in these procedurally restricted passages.

"Annual employer cost of lost productivity due to migraines was estimated at $3,309 per sufferer. Total medical costs associated with migraines in the United States amounted to one billion dollars in 1994, in addition to lost productivity estimated at thirteen to seventeen billion dollars per year."

The workplace is an exquisite and total torture when suffering from a migraine. I invariably struggle, and then abdicate. Some of the strength of that feeling of work=s extreme & immediate suffering has long since hopped the phenomenal fence and broken free of its strict association with migraines per se. I eventually just thought of work itself as a sort of low-grade migraine, a background irritation in which the foreground pain inevitably and periodically arises. Like the roaring laugh track in a sit-com.

For a long-time I knew, holisticlly, that this pain was necessary, even benevolent - that is, a teaching. Not an easy one, but it was my body's instinctive response to its situation. Western science focuses either pornographically on the neuro-materialist aspects of what physically, isolatably happens to the body during a migraine, or has dismissed the whole thing as a mental malady. Either way, its seen as a disease, the body as weak or malfunctioning, the patient its victim. I have long known there is much more to what is happening here, and that I - how I am living my life, is a responsible party (and the only on I have hope of effecting) - but charting the rhythms and happenstances around my migraines has been a long-term project, and one that collapses every time i fall into resisting its logic, or lamenting my fate. While science does acknowledge tension and stress as factors in "some" migraines, they stand mute on emotional habits, on what we might call the psycho-energetics of migraines. And maybe we want our science to stand mute on this... its a seemingly obscure terrain, it offers no quick fix. You might miss a day of work, not get to go shopping.

My focus now is shifting to the prodrome arena, to becoming conscious of the early symptoms that might alert me to an attack, so I can respond to these incipient signals, instead of ignoring them, and be forced to respond to the willful demands of a full-blown migraine.

There appears, here, to be a definite emotional and energetic link between these spasms of pain, and a re-occuring repression of unconscious desires.

The cleaning staff is here, my stomach's growling, that's far enough, time to go. i leave it to me to probe the emotional subterrain, and for you, if you care to, to wonder how this might relate to the Kyle you know, whether aesthetically, intimately, blogger-ly, whatev. And if you don't know me, you know someone else who suffers these fuckers : 8% of men, 16% of women, for a start.