Herbs 'n' stuff

Because I'm a bad person, I get migraines.

It has to be because I'm a bad person, why else would I be inflicted with such a heinous condition?

I had my first migraine when I was living in San Francisco ... a long time ago. It wasn't something that I worried much about as I only got them very infrequently — like once a year or less.

Then as I got older, they came more frequently. Since having Mar, they have descending on me like ants on a honey bear, nagging me, causing me pain, causing me to be dropped at the ER by whomever is unlucky enough to be within arm's reach or on the other end of the phone — on a regular basis.

I have, for the most part, learned to live with this condition. I have drugs that will, given enough time, get rid of migraines.

I've tried many preventatives and none, so far (I'm always hopeful) have worked for me for a variety of different reasons. I was taking a particularly potent anti-seizure (yes, it's so bad that I tried taking an anti-convulsant) medicine. It did a pretty good job of holding back the migraines but it also make me: sleepy, slow, not hungry ... oh and it was ever-so-slowly poisoning me.

It's pretty sucky, but I can deal with it ... most of the time. I do have my moments when I'm having a particularly bad migraine and the medicine is taking a long time to work, that I'll get a bit ... uh, out of sorts over the whole thing (and by "out of sorts" I mean that there'll be some crying and lots of "Why me?" questions being bandied about).

These days, I've been doing pretty good — oh except for the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend when I got to spend a couple hours with my friends the IV drip and compazine — I'm trying some new stuff.

My uber-husband and my doctor have, for some reason that completely eludes me, decided that I should be on blood-pressure medicine. Yeah, they're crazy. I mean, it's not like I have a family history of blood-pressure issues or anything. Well, unless you want to count my father and grandfather ... oh and both my grammas ... but still.

And it's not like my blood pressure is high or anything. OK, I'll admit that it does tend to be a little high when I'm stressed or ill or when the doctor checks it, but I'm sure it's fine the rest of time.

But so I don't have to hear Bill harp on the subject which he likes to do in between cigarettes, I take the damn medicine. But only because one of the side effects is that it's known to help migraines. So I'll just pretend that's why I take blood-pressure medicine.

I've also started taking Dong Quai, an herbal thing that is also supposed to help with menstrual migraines (which I get a lot of).

So now my monthly migraine season is just about upon us (heaven help my family), we'll see how these things that I begrudingly take will do a damn thing. If not, I'm considering just having my whole head removed.