November 1–December 31, 2004 — Headfirst

I couldn’t see very well when I woke up this morning. I felt fine, but I found I was bumping into things I’d found relatively easy to avoid the day before.

There was some novelty to it: It was strange to stare in the mirror and only see half my face. I was terrified, though, when I realized I could only read one word at a time, and only using the peripheral vision on my right side.

I decided to start my day and hope my vision would come back. Then, while I was in the shower, my head began to hurt.

I spent the next hour reading medical books with my left eye closed. As it turns out, the partial blindness is referred to as an aura, and it’s a symptom of a certain class of migraines. (Who knew.)

When the pain got too intense for me to have lights on, I put away my medical books and went back to bed. I’d never been happier not to have windows. I lay in the dark for hours, stumbling to the washroom whenever the nausea got bad enough that I felt I might throw up. Eventually it was late enough that I figured the sun must be gone. I went to work.

Which is sort of where this was going all along. When I do get migraines, they always follow periods of intense stress, and last week I spent about 80 hours in the office. It’s Sunday now, and yesterday was the first day I hadn’t been to the office in a while. I think yesterday was a bit too much of a release, so today I learned about a new type of migraine. Or new to me, anyway.

I still ended up at work, though, and I still accomplished a fair bit. But I decided I should start trying to manage stress better after I told my dad part of this story and his response was, “Are you sure you weren’t having a stroke?”

It’s hard, though. I worry a lot, and I need more distractions than I have. I end up thinking about work too much.

This week I can’t sleep, either. It’s not insomnia; I fall asleep pretty quickly. Instead, I have dreams upsetting enough to wake me up in a panic two or three times a night. Last night I was dreaming about street hockey, and then my friend broke his neck; the night before I fell off a bridge. Most of the time I don’t remember, though.

And that’s the update on my physical and psychological health. An extended series on my emotional health is due to begin any moment now.

Or maybe I need to learn how to laugh things off a little easier.