I’ve been out of touch lately, but I have a good excuse. So long as you can consider debilitating migraines good, that is.

Every few years I go through a period where I get several migraines a day for about a week. I’ve always attributed them to stress-related muscle tension - I thank my mom, or maybe my gender in general, for the tendency to hold the world behind my left shoulder blade. I felt the tension creeping in about a month ago, but ignored the signs, and last Monday woke up at 2:30 am with a biting migraine. I have never been woken up from a dead sleep like this before, but luckily had one trusty (and just barely expired) Imitrex left at the bottom of my purse and fell back asleep w/in the hour. I was fine the next day, but had two more that following night, so I made an appt w/ my doctor for more Imitrex and possibly something to reduce the muscle tension. Unfortunately, this round of migraines was more stubborn and an Imitrex, a muscle relaxer, a couple Advil and a hot compress were barely enough to pick me up off the floor and get me lulled into a drug-induced sleep. Even then, I’d wake up hazy a few hours later and the whole process may or may not start all over again.

On a referral from my doctor, I saw a Neurologist on Tuesday. I have symptoms of both cluster headaches and migraines, but because my jaw tends to get so seized up in the process, that is apparently more migrainous in nature. Too bad, though, one of the most effective treatments for cluster headaches is pure oxygen (my doctor would have prescribed a home tank - how cool is that?). I have some new meds, and those seem to be working a lot better. To be safe, I also had an MRI and they’d like me to do a sleep study to determine if I have sleep apnea - irregular breathing at night - which could be causing the headaches in the middle of the night.

So, long story short, that’s where I’ve been the past 11 days. In case you were worried.