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Accomplishment in spite of the pain: give yourself credit

An opportunity to participate

This last winter, sometime after the first of the year, the Whatcom Museum sent out a call to regional artists to participate in an open hanging.  The title of the exhibit currently on display is:
 
Nature in the Balance:  Artists Interpreting Climate Change.  
  1.       What is happening to the earth?
  2.       Why is it happening?
  3.       What are your visions of the future?
  4.        How can people make a    difference?  

These were the questions that the artist’s submission was to address.  With at least 3 or 4 months to produce a piece, I decided to try to respond to the invitation.

 

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Suicide is a scary thought

Hanging on by my fingernails

Hanging on – just barely

This is a hard topic for me right now because it cuts a little too close to the bone.  I’ve been having a really hard time lately.  The headaches have been relentless AND accompanied by mood crashes that last at least a couple of days.  It all leaves me feeling worthless as a human being.  Worth less than other people around me who walk the planet and go about their daily lives getting things done, having a good time, etc.  Sometimes all you can do is just hang on.

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Migraine roller coaster on the roll

 

Santa Cruz boardwalk

Rolling South

Last week we packed up the van and headed south on our annual road trip from northwest Washington to Santa Cruz, Calif.  This seasonal Washington to California migration has been a part of my entire adult life.  I left my native California to move to Oregon and later Washington at age 24.  One or two times a year I returned to visit my parents.  Eventually, my husband, then my children became part of these journeys.  My father and then my mother died, and for a couple of years, I seemingly left my home state behind for good.  Then my youngest son settled into Santa Cruz with a job and a girlfriend, and I found myself, like a seasonal laborer, once again committed to heading south on a regular basis.  This feels right to my homing pigeon instincts.

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Tips for Trips

Traveling with migraine or chronic daily headache

I love to travel, be off, off, off and away.  But with migraines, there’s a catch, isn’t there.  Basically traveling is often stressful, and stress and migraines are just not a good mix.  On the other hand, it is so worth it to me to work around my pain issues and find a way to take off on my next adventure.  I always have an idea or plan brewing about where and when to go.

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Defying the gravity of migraine

I have a Bowling Ball inside my head

Heavy Duty

Having migraines is heavy.  It makes me feel bound down, full of pressure, and often brings me to me knees with the weight of it all.  I have my own personal image that has represented my headaches for years, not one I actively conjured up, but a nasty fantasy that popped into my head all on it’s own, years ago and still returns from time to time.  I have a bowling ball inside my skull.  There is just a little space in there between the surface, the circumference of the ball, and that of my head.  With each movement of my head, it thunks against the inside of my skull.  It is a heavy burden, and as I move my head, its weight causes more anguish.

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No Baseline — Am I sick? Is this normal? or Do I have lyme disease???

Another bleary-eyed day

Lately I’ve been feeling unfocused, fatigued, sleepy, and in some degree of head/ neck pain every day. Now if there’s a good side to this …. I am not in extreme pain, but I am essentially non-functional.  Oh I can do the basic stuff even and including cooking dinner, but that’s about as high level a task as I can handle right now.

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On the Road Again ….. and slightly out of my mind

Today was a struggle.  You don’t realize how much you rely on the environment, the sort of external framework you’ve created to support you……….. until it’s not there.

 

View from my balcony, early light

 

There are mornings when I awake with a headache, and it’s more or less clear what I need to do about it.  Then there are days when I get up to a state, not of pain, but of a strange sort of confusion.  I can’t remember where I’ve put things, whether I’ve taken my morning meds, what I was about to do, much less make a plan for the day or carry out the plan that’s already in place.

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Chronic migraine brings big changes: how do we deal?

Changes

  1. Retired early.  I miss my students and the intellectual challenge.  I feel like I’m out of loop – in some sort of railway siding, waiting for the next step which is unknowable.
  2. Fatigue and more fatigue
  3. Chronic pain and never knowing if you’ll be able to follow through on plans
  4. Tachyphylaxis:  diminishing response to successive doses of one medication after another rendering them less and less effective over time.
  5. Too much emphasis on doctors and other professional helpers = an interruption to life.
  6. My beautiful son has inherited my migraine gene.

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Hope: how do we do it?

This is a great, juicy topic

My masters thesis in the bad old days, long, long ago was actually on hope. My thesis advisor and head of the Occupational Therapy Dept. at USC was a crusty old Irish dame named Mary Reilly.  She made it clear that what I was to focus on was ‘lowly old hope’ – the kind that gets you from one day to the next, and not on ‘self actualization’ or the like, one of those buzzwords for the latest self-help or self improvement fad that came out of the 70’s.  My task was to suss out what keeps people going in spite of the worst possible circumstances like a devastating stroke or spinal cord injury that leaves you paralyzed. Continue reading “Hope: how do we do it?”