Tag-Archive for » migraines «
Yesterday I was supposed to go to a meeting about my research and take an exam. This weekend I had two migraines, but they weren’t very bad, so I pushed through them to prepare. Working through those migraines is likely why I got the kind of migraine on Monday that made it impossible for me to attend the meeting or take my exam.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have worked through those migraines on the weekend and rested more. I probably would have been well enough to take my exam and go to the meeting, but I would have been unprepared.
Perhaps I should have started preparing earlier. I do try to stay a little ahead and avoid procrastination, but with so many migraines, I feel like I’m just playing catch-up all the time.
This semester I’ve been pretty frustrated with migraines. I’m behind at work, in my classes, and have piles of paperwork I need to take care of. At least the weather looks nice this week – some sunshine & migraine free days should go a long way towards cheering me up.
I’d like to stay home this morning with my coffee and a novel, or maybe finish up some blog posts I’ve started, but not finished, in the last few weeks. But you’ll have to wait to hear what I think about The Wild Trees
Because today, I’m going to work, and I’m going to stay there much later than I’d like. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow about my research, and I want to have some exciting new model runs to show off!
Over the last year, the frequency of my migraines has increased. Then last week, I had a new and frightening kind of aura. If I were seeing a neurologist, those two statements would be certain to worry her, and she’d likely demand all kinds of fancy brain scans.
Unfortunately, I can’t afford health insurance. While I have plenty to pay my bills (I’ve even got enough saved for almost a year’s rent!), there is simply no way I could afford being treated by a neurologist. So, like the many other Americans without health insurance, I’ve just got to hope it’s nothing serious and that by some miracle our government gets some real health reform passed – soon.
Several weeks ago I posted barometric pressure trends from December along with whether or not I was sick that day. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good job recording barometric pressure on days that I wasn’t sick. I did a better job in January.
If you’re new to this blog, I have frequent migraines that I believe are influenced by barometric pressure. I think that large and/or fast changes in barometric pressure are likely the cause of most of my migraines.
Below, I present barometric pressure trends on days that I didn’t have a migraine, days that I did have a migraine, and days where I captured a switch (migraine to no migraine or no migraine to migraine). In these graphs, barometric pressure is on the vertical axis in millibars and the time is on the horizontal axis. The last time on the horizontal axis is the time that I captured the graph from WolframAlpha and recorded my condition. So, for example, on January 2nd at ~10pm I didn’t have a migraine, but on January 4 at ~8am I did have a migraine.
I’ve been keeping track of barometric pressure in order to get a better idea of how it influences my migraines. I believe that fast and/or large pressure changes are probably triggering many or most of my migraines. Below are graphs of barometric pressure throughout December when I did and did not have a migraine. I did not look at the barometric pressure every day, so not all days are represented. Days when I was well are particularly underrepresented.
Time is on the x-axis and barometric pressure (hPa) is on the y-axis.
On these days, I did not have a migraine at the time the data was plotted. However, on two of the days (highlighted in red) I got a migraine later in the day. On December 31st, I had a headache, but it was not a migraine. Click for larger view.
I did not look at pressure on enough days when I did not have a migraine to really determine if small or gradual pressure changes and steady pressure do not trigger my migraines. I would have expected to have a migraine the night of December 31st if fast pressure changes gave me migraines. Perhaps they were too small or I slept through the migraine.
These are graphs of barometric pressure on days I did have migraines. The day highlighted in green is a day that triggers other than pressure were present. Red highlighting corresponds to days in the "no migraine" picture where I began the day without a migraine, but developed one later on. Purple indicates days that I began with a migraine and it became more severe. Click for larger view.
Fast pressure changes are certainly associated with many of the days that I had a migraine, but not all. The pressure changes on December 2nd and 5th seem slow and gradual. December 10th’s pressure changes also did not seem that extreme. Yet I still had migraines. December 2-10 I was frantically working on papers and studying for finals, so perhaps I was more stressed than I thought and that triggered those migraines.
It’s possible that pressure change only causes migraines for me or is more likely to cause migraine for me in conjunction with another trigger, or that they aren’t related at all. I’ve been trying to do a better job of keeping track of pressure and my migraines this month, so hopefully January’s data will be more helpful. More data on my migraines in the archives.
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