Bad headaches

I have these horrible migraines--I might have mentioned them.

A couple of my friends have them; several of the gals at work have them, too. We talk about them endlessly, only because a migraine pretty much takes over your entire world. You either have a headache, think you are going to get a headache, HAD a headache or are wondering when you are going to get a headache.

And we talk about what we take and what we do to tend to/avoid the pain. We all have a bag of rescue drugs in our handbags (it's all the same stuff) and if one of us gets something new, the rest of us will ask for some the next time we go in because you never know--it MIGHT work. I like those little silver meth suppositories that only work if you take them 20 minutes before you think you might be getting a headache.

SO my friend Marji has them, too. She takes Top (almost everyone I know does. It's supposed to calm something deep inside your brain. The dosage is a little iffy, though, and hard to get right). It makes my hands hurt but better my hands than my head.

She, unlike the rest of the migraineurs I know, never ends up in the ER with her fist in her eye, with her blood pressure at 295/190. She doesn't go to the clinic in San Francisco and get big needles jammed into her skull. She doesn't carry an ER script behind her driver's license for when she is out of town.

She isn't up on the kind of lunchtime chat we are either---did they push the drugs in your line or let them drip in the saline? Did you get Benydryl as an accelerant? Did they give you oxygen? That's supposed to help. With volatile migraines like ours, you need a support group.

So this morning, I get the email from Marji. She has her fist jammed in her eye and is on the way to the ER.

I know exactly how she feels.