This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.
I survived a truly awful headache on Monday. I call these tension headaches, though I'm not sure that's medically accurate. They're migraine-level suffering, and the longer I'm conscious with them, the more they hurt. They're kind of interesting in that they ramp up all my senses even further, meaning that all of those can be used to make my headache worse.
Case in point, the smell of dinner. It wasn't a super spicy dinner, just a variation on forgotten roast with various vegetables and potatoes. But at least in my house, if you use the slow cooker to make food, the smell of it will permeate the house. The smell of dinner, then, was torture to me. It wasn't that it smelled bad, it was that the smell was so strong, it actually hurt me. When it came time to eat, I couldn't make myself even consider eating it, so I opted for leftovers. Cold leftovers, to dampen the strength of the smell and taste.
Other things that were more painful included sunlight, which there was much of that day, reflecting off the snow. That was remarkably unhelpful, I must say. Also the loud music at the lunch place I visited, sound effects in my computer game and any form of touch or speech. So, basically most things in life caused me pain. As the pain increased, I began to feel sick to my stomach. Even an hour and a half nap did nothing to help. It was... really not a great day.
I used to get these headaches about once or twice a month in college. I had no idea why, other than "maybe don't be so stressed out, dummy." But really, it's college. Stress comes with the territory. Same with adult life, really.
The difference between now, when I rarely have these bewilderingly powerful headaches, and back then, when I had them on a regular basis, is chiropractic care. These headaches are, in me, directly caused by a mis-alignment of my neck vertebrae. I'm sure the stress, and my hunching and stressing the associated muscles, is what causes the misalignment... but there's less to be done about that.
After the hour+ nap didn't work, I battled nausea to drive myself down to the chiropractor to get my neck fixed. This is sadly not a magical fix for the issue, but it does stop the pain from increasing by correcting the penultimate cause. After that, I got myself home, shut myself in the bedroom against the smell of dinner, took appropriate pain killer, and proceeded to basically do nothing useful for the rest of the day. Note: in case it wasn't obvious, this was because I literally couldn't do anything useful due to the sheer amount of pain.
So while Monday is usually supposed to be a work day, it was pretty much eaten by this experience. But I still got a useful blog post out of it, so that's not truly a wasted day. Other notable things this week include caring for a friend's pet bird for a few days and a positive checkup at the dentist.
I survived a truly awful headache on Monday. I call these tension headaches, though I'm not sure that's medically accurate. They're migraine-level suffering, and the longer I'm conscious with them, the more they hurt. They're kind of interesting in that they ramp up all my senses even further, meaning that all of those can be used to make my headache worse.
Case in point, the smell of dinner. It wasn't a super spicy dinner, just a variation on forgotten roast with various vegetables and potatoes. But at least in my house, if you use the slow cooker to make food, the smell of it will permeate the house. The smell of dinner, then, was torture to me. It wasn't that it smelled bad, it was that the smell was so strong, it actually hurt me. When it came time to eat, I couldn't make myself even consider eating it, so I opted for leftovers. Cold leftovers, to dampen the strength of the smell and taste.
Other things that were more painful included sunlight, which there was much of that day, reflecting off the snow. That was remarkably unhelpful, I must say. Also the loud music at the lunch place I visited, sound effects in my computer game and any form of touch or speech. So, basically most things in life caused me pain. As the pain increased, I began to feel sick to my stomach. Even an hour and a half nap did nothing to help. It was... really not a great day.
I used to get these headaches about once or twice a month in college. I had no idea why, other than "maybe don't be so stressed out, dummy." But really, it's college. Stress comes with the territory. Same with adult life, really.
The difference between now, when I rarely have these bewilderingly powerful headaches, and back then, when I had them on a regular basis, is chiropractic care. These headaches are, in me, directly caused by a mis-alignment of my neck vertebrae. I'm sure the stress, and my hunching and stressing the associated muscles, is what causes the misalignment... but there's less to be done about that.
After the hour+ nap didn't work, I battled nausea to drive myself down to the chiropractor to get my neck fixed. This is sadly not a magical fix for the issue, but it does stop the pain from increasing by correcting the penultimate cause. After that, I got myself home, shut myself in the bedroom against the smell of dinner, took appropriate pain killer, and proceeded to basically do nothing useful for the rest of the day. Note: in case it wasn't obvious, this was because I literally couldn't do anything useful due to the sheer amount of pain.
So while Monday is usually supposed to be a work day, it was pretty much eaten by this experience. But I still got a useful blog post out of it, so that's not truly a wasted day. Other notable things this week include caring for a friend's pet bird for a few days and a positive checkup at the dentist.
No comments:
Post a Comment