Hard to Focus
Living with migraine pain can be difficult to say the least. When you consider everything that comes along with ongoing pain, I am amazed that we get anything accomplished during our days.
The symptoms of migraine, both during the episode and after it has subsided, can make concentration difficult. The ongoing pain such as chronic migraine along with many other chronic pain conditions, often leads to anxiety, depression and exhaustion. These added symptoms affect your ability to focus or rather the ability to stay focused from time to time.
The daze
It happens to me more often than I would care to honestly admit. I have lost count of the number of times I have gone into a store to pick up two or three things and only walked out of the store without one of the items I was looking for to start with. It’s not that I forget what I am looking for; more so I forget that I had other things I needed to look for all together.
At work, I spend most days double and triple checking the things I have already completed each day to be certain that I actually completed each task and not just thought about completing it. It may sound a bit silly, but these days, I work in payroll and let’s face it, nobody wants to be the person that shortchanged someone on their paycheck.
The migraine hangover
The effects of a bad migraine (at least in my case) can last for days after the migraine itself has passed. I can only attribute that partly to exhaustion. Much like being sick with some kind of virus or the flu, even though you do manage to sleep, it is not always restful or replenishing. It is almost as if your brain simply hits the pause button until you wake and then releases everything all over again.
My support
Most of the time I am able to lean on my wife to help me stay organized and get things accomplished. That all by itself is a huge accomplishment considering I am episodic and she is chronic, with other health issues. Some days we just look at each other and laugh at our situation. Other days it is all we can do not to just curl up on the couch and cry over it.
I know my wife struggles with focus too. I have seen her go to the computer to print out a shipping label for a box that needs to go out, and then completely lose track of why she got on the computer to start with at all. She gets infuriated when it happens and it’s all I can do not to laugh because I think she is cute when she is angry (as long as she’s not angry at me of course)!
Aside from healthy eating and sleeping habits, I am not sure there is really anything we can do to prevent the brain fog that comes with the migraine pain. So, for now I suppose we will just keep using post-it notes and daily reminders to each other when needed.
How does migraine affect your level of focus? Have you found any tricks or remedies that helped?
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