Men at Work
Chronic migraine, you can only compare it with chronic migraine. But that's only for people with chronic migraine perfectly clear and this story is also meant for others . So let me take a shot.
Chronic migraine is as if someone lives in your head constantly and 24 hours a day he is working on a renovation. Some days are "good" . He (maybe it's a she , but given the subsequent show of strength which I shall tell you about, I like to think it is a “he” ) he hangs the whole day paintings up on the inside of my skull . Nail in the wall ( my head in this case) hanging the painting and then caught the next nail again . No coffee break or lunch . The Louvre is, compared with the inside of my head, but a small painting shop. If someone asks you that day how it goes, I say something like : "It's going pretty well” . You don't wont people tot think you are a play-actor and you have the intuitive feeling that you can only say a limited time to someone that you are feeling bad (except of course to that special kind of saints, the partner of someone with chronic pain, who deserve their own story)
Other days the work is done thoroughly . Then the floors should apparently be replaced , marble tile floors, which of course are first crushed with a sledge hammer. Then the marble pieces are pressed out through one side of your head. When on such a day someone informs at my well being i say:”It could be better”.
Other days complete concrete walls need to be replaced, so again the walls are first pulverized, this time not with a hammer , but with a specially crafted beat machine and the remaining pieces are grinned in another machine that is using rotating blades, especially the reinforcements of the concrete offer resistance. When on such a day someone asks how i am doing, i say nothing at all, because i am are apathetic watching in front of myself, waiting for the moment that only just paintings are hung, or because i am puking over the toilet and that is usually not the appropriate time for a proper conversation.
Unfortunately, there is little communication with the person who lives inside my head , he might as well be on Mars or Venus. It is totally unknow what he has planned . I have often asked for a list of activities, but never received one.
A special ordeal are those people who, with the best intentions, know exactly the schedule of the activities in your head: " Did you perhaps eat chocolate? " I say yes, because I know from experience the other will continue till he has got hold of something (“No, maybe cheese”, etc ). With a triumphant look the other explaines to me that if I eat chocolate that man in my head is going to replace the floor. Why that is, is unclear, but it is common ground .
And then the stories of other people who also have such a man in their head, but they control this man as a puppet and that man is therefore not going to work at impossible times, those stories are not unknown to me either. Incidentally, I never meet these people, who have this kind of power over their migraine, but I always hear that it is someone they know.
About how to combat chronic migraine using medicine, ice , psychological warfare and cold showers another time .
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