What's In Your Bag?
The most important items in my migraine travel toolkit are my two pairs of migraine glasses. We all know that many kinds of light can either contribute to triggering an attack or make a current one much worse, which is known as photophobia; bright or filtered sun, for example, or fluorescent bulbs, including energy saving CFLs. Sunglasses with the FL-41 tint, like TheraSpecs, best block the particular rays that are worst for migraine brains and eyes. I try to never be without mine, but I am unfortunately sometimes careless as a result of brain fog, or maybe it's just my personality. And migraine-specific glasses are fairly expensive. Sunglasses are easy to lose. (Note: I have not been paid by TheraSpecs nor were my glasses discounted for this recommendation.)
Indoor and outdoor Theraspecs
For Christmas this year I asked my parents for only one thing. Well, two. My trusty TheraSpecs, both indoor and outdoor, were no longer so trusty. My indoors were lost. In the photo of all of us advocates at last year's Health Union (Migraine.com's parent company) Connexion conference, it's clear that I am the only one wearing outdoor TheraSpecs... indoors. You can't see my eyes. I did that for a year, until the scratches started driving me crazy and the eye pieces got super wiggly and one of them finally fell off. John fixed them for me, but I had my eye on a beautiful new pair with more of a cat's eye shape and tortoiseshell frames. I did get both indoor and outdoor versions of them for Christmas and I was very happy.
"Okay, maybe Nancy also was wearing her outdoors!"
Searching for missing glasses
Until February when I was leaving with X to take her to school and I couldn't find my outdoors in my purse. My huge, cavernous purse filled with... everything. We scoured the house, and the car, seemingly for days, and I thought about where I'd been and was preparing to start calling businesses when John got it in his head that they had to be in our house and he would find them. Finally, it was me who suddenly had an image of myself in the dining room removing things from my purse, fishing for keys, or my wallet, or a receipt, or something, and placing the sunglasses on the love seat (which tends to be used for temporary storage). I searched through all of the things there and found my TheraSpecs in Zo's paper Valentine's Day school bag with all the candy wrappers and stickers and sweet tarts.
Getting more organized
Horrified that the expensive, necessary sunglasses might have been accidentally tossed out, I realized I needed to get more organized so I could find things faster and store them easier. I bought a soft eyeglass case with a flexible closure to replace the drawstring bag I was using to protect the new lenses from scratches and slipped it into one of the outside purse pockets. I stopped stowing receipts and wrappers and empty water bottles in my bag and packed everything into zipper pouches to keep my items separated. One bag contains makeup, one contains loose change, one contains tissues and nail clippers and extra business cards.
The largest bag has all my migraine items. Earplugs, earbuds, mentholated patches, extra medicine for both me and X, a thin sleeping mask, peppermint lotion, a Vicks “vapinhaler” (menthol again), and a pain relieving roll on. AND extra dark sunglasses just in case. What do you keep with you in case of migraine emergency? How do you stay organized?
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