The Monster

I’m late with the blog today. It’s noon and I’ve debated on missing the first day since I started Lucy’s Buzz almost a month ago.

Why am I late? I have a migraine. One that won’t go away. I wondered why I should tell you all this, but then this is reality and there’s nothing so juicy as a good dose of the ‘here and now’.

I’ve been plagued with the migraine monster for decades. In the US, I went to every doctor imaginable to help me get rid of the blasted things. My mother would call me to tell me of a new medicine that had just come out. She’d clip articles on migraines from the newspaper and rush them to me.

Five days a week I had them, and I had a business to run and had to function through the black hole in my head. Even neurologists couldn’t fix me. ‘Could be peanuts. Could be chocolate. Could be hereditary. Could be stress.’ I didn’t care what it could be. I knew that if I ate peanuts, I’d have a problem. I knew that chocolate was a trigger, but try and stop eating chocolate! Hereditary; who knows. Stress; I have a stomach for processing that. No one made them stop. One doctor did give me a pill that put the migraine to bed within 1 hour. I liked that. Except, 10 years ago, that one pill cost $20 (2,600 rupees). My pocketbook didn’t like that.

When I came to Sri Lanka to stay, I brought a suitcase full of those pills. It cost me an arm and a leg, but I couldn’t be without them for my migraines are hospital quality migraines. Emergency room migraines.

Somehow, I found a doctor, Dr S, here in Sri Lanka (a very busy doctor – the wait to see him is sometimes hours long) who without too much hoopla prescribed me a nasal medicine that made a migraine disappear within 20 minutes. Every time! He also gave me a med to take daily, as a preventative. Amazing! My migraines went from 5 a week to maybe 2 or 3 a month.

I was reborn!

A few years later, the nasal medicine couldn’t be bought in Sri Lanka. How could that happen? What were migraine sufferers going to do without it?

Eventually I found it in India and so my one friend, who traveled there almost monthly, would bring me a stash of the golden med every time I got low on it.

Just recently, India took the nasal med off the market. I was stuck. I am stuck. Stuck with inefficient medicine. There must be a reason it’s taken off the market, but I'd trade some horrid side effect for relief from the monster.

One doctor recently told me to take 2 Panadol (like aspirin) and go to bed. About as effective as hitting my head with a hammer. Dr. S. replied to my emergency text and told me what medicine is now available to help. The medicine, which I’ve taken today, has helped a bit (or else I wouldn’t be able to write this blog!), but it hasn’t made the monster go away. I, just like in old days, have to live my life and carry on. Not lie in bed sucking my thumb, waiting for salvation.

I once saw a cartoon of a giant dinosaur

posed ready to eat a Volvo stationwagen.

The caption said, 'Take 2 Volvos

and call me in the morning!'

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