It is my second week of inpatient hospitalization through the Michigan Headache and Neurological Institute (MHNI). http://www.mhni.com/ I have daily, refractory migraines, which just keep getting worse. They have affected my family life, my work in a big way, decreased my circle of friends, changed my retirement plans and much more. Migraine runs in the family, and unfortunately, I’ve passed this nasty disease on to my (now) 35-year-old son. The hospital was a huge step for me. I’ve never been in one except to birth my 2 children, and that is, of course, quite different.
One of the many things that finally drove me to MHNI was that I began to realize I could no longer deal with numbers, a side effect of some medications. I couldn’t make change, add my hours correctly on my request-for-leave form, not to mention subtract, multiply or divide. I became afraid that my teaching skills were slipping and it was, therefore, affecting my students and their learning.