Year Three, Week Forty-Six - Stupification.....

The ongoing increase in my migraines has been worrisome.  I'm taking two migraine prevention medications daily. One of them exhausts me but since it was keeping most of the headaches at bay I accepted the trade-off between side effects and benefits.  Several other prevention medications have been utterly intolerable for someone who needs to have a fully functioning brain in order to work daily.  I discussed the situation with my neurologist Thursday morning. 

The bottom line is that we are running out of options.  I've failed amitriptyline, imipramine, Inderal, Topamax and Depakote.  There are a couple of seizure medications left.  We can't switch up the current medications without running into significant medication interactions.  And there is Botox.

Hubby's face when I mentioned this possibility was hilarious.  "Isn't that the stuff they inject into people's lips?"  Not exactly, babe, it's the stuff they use to paralyze muscles in the forehead to make the wrinkles not show.   You know, the one that leaves people with no facial expression.  Yeah.  That.

So Thursday evening I started gabapentin.  I slept like the dead and had a hard time getting up.  I got through the day at work despite the fact that I couldn't get my fingers to work correctly on the keyboard (still a problem).  I got some special kind of dizzy every time I stood up and I think I might have been talking too much.  I fell asleep last night at 9:30 and struggled to get up at 7:30 this morning.  I paid the bills but used a calculator just in case.  The dizziness wasn't as persistent today, but nausea has been.  But....

Friday afternoon I felt it... the sensation of a headache creeping up the back of my neck, aiming for the right side of the base of my skull.  It's an all-too-familiar sensation.  It's not at all unusual for a new medication to trigger a bunch of migraines before it starts to prevent them - it's a sucky reality.  So I braced myself for.....nothing. The pain bounced against the outside of my head for about ten minutes. It was as if the headache couldn't quite get INSIDE my head.

So for the time being I am riding out the general stupification that comes with every new medication I've tried so far.  Keeping my fingers crossed.  And there's still the Botox.

Meanwhile, I think I'll go to bed.  After all, it's almost 8 o'clock.

DeeDee