My diet has been pretty good lately. I've eating smaller portions and healthier foods. Today I even ate vegan chili! Yesterday I did have a sausage, egg and cheese at Dunkies, but I only ate half, plus I hadn't eaten much in the last 24 hours becuase of my migraine, so I think I deserved that half of a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich. I've lost weight though, thank God. Someone even asked me if I've lost weight! Stuff like that makes my day. It's always nice to hear someone randomly say something nice to you like that, especially when you're trying to lose weight and they don't even know that.
Ok so other stuff:
My father went in for surgery today, and I guess it went well. This is his 4th surgery in 2 years. Wow. Anyways. They found the problem with his knee. It was a tumor in his thigh, pushing on the bone, causing it to be unaligned with his knee or something, which causes his knee to swell and be in constant pain. All this time the doctors were operating on his knee, trying to solve the problem, when there was a big fucking 2 pound tumor in his thigh. If we had money, this problem would have been solved long ago, and it wouldn't have taken 3 surgeries to figure out what is going on. After the first surgery, when his knee didn't get better, the doctors were baffled, so they went in again, and couldn't find anything wrong, and his knee didn't get better, and they were even more confused. But they never really did anything to fix it. It wasn't until my father went to a different doctor and got an MRI of his entire leg that they found the tumor. It's a benign tumor, thank god, but what if it hadn't been? Lazy doctors suck, and if we had money, those doctors would not have been as lazy.
But don't worry, Jonathan. I don't hate all doctors! Just certain ones. I love my neurologist, for example. She was able to admit that she might have been mistaken in giving me a higher dose of Imitrex at first, and when giving me that higher dose didn't help, she took time out of her schedule to help me find out what is going on. She's a good doctor.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Feverfew, and I crushed souls today
I got a migraine yesterday, as noted in my last journal entry. It didn't go away after getting a good night's sleep, and that was expected, since I didn't take any Imitrex to make it go away. So I suffered for about 24 hours with this stupid headache, fighting it occasionally with Advil and Excedrin. It finally went away fully today at around 3:30ish, which was around when I got it yesterday. But I crushed its soul. I didn't let it beat me. I got up today and did my work, and went to my classes, and I DIDN'T succumb to Imitrex. I didn't take any Imitrex.
Score: Leanne 1, Imitrex 0
Score: Leanne 1, Migraines 0
Also, along with the Magnesium, I am gonna start taking this herbal thing called Feverfew, which is supposed to help with migraines. I've had little luck with synthetic pain killers (advil, excedrin, imitrex), so I figure I have nothing to lose in at least trying it out. If it doesn't work, I will just dump it. Don't worry though (someone has expressed concern). I'm not jumping off the deep end and saying all synethtic drug drugs are bad bad bad and they all should be ditched for natural remedies and that doctors are bad. Cuz I am still one two medications to prevent migraines. I just don't have many options as far as pain killers for migraines go, so I figured I have nothing to lose in at least trying the herbal supplements for migraines.
Score: Leanne 1, Imitrex 0
Score: Leanne 1, Migraines 0
Also, along with the Magnesium, I am gonna start taking this herbal thing called Feverfew, which is supposed to help with migraines. I've had little luck with synthetic pain killers (advil, excedrin, imitrex), so I figure I have nothing to lose in at least trying it out. If it doesn't work, I will just dump it. Don't worry though (someone has expressed concern). I'm not jumping off the deep end and saying all synethtic drug drugs are bad bad bad and they all should be ditched for natural remedies and that doctors are bad. Cuz I am still one two medications to prevent migraines. I just don't have many options as far as pain killers for migraines go, so I figured I have nothing to lose in at least trying the herbal supplements for migraines.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Magnesium
I have a headache today, and I am not taking any Imitrex to get rid of it. I'm not sure where this headache came from. It might be caffeine withdrawal since I only had half of a cup of coffee today. It started feeling like a sinus headache sort of, and now it's above my right eye where all my migraines/tension headaches are. I took a couple of Excedrin to get rid of it, but of course it hasn't worked, which is why I started taking the Imitrex in the first place. I am going to take Alleive in a couple hours if it doesn't go away though. And do some yoga. If it doesn't go away I am going to have to ride it out, because that Imitrex is just so fucking horrible.
But I am taking magnesium supplements now, and it's really helping. I have been reading online and found that lots of people with migraines have migraines because they have magnesium deficiencies, because magnesium helps to regulate blood flow in the blood vessels in the brain. So if you are proned to migraines and don't get enough magnesium, chances are you are going to have problems. So my doctor and I decided that it would be good for me to take magnesium every day, and since I started taking the magnesium I have noticed a difference. I haven't had the tension headaches I've been getting lately, and I just feel like there isn't that persisting pressure in my head all the time.
I read online that a study was done with people who have migraines, and these people were treated with just magnesium, and 85% of the people experienced immediate relief from their chronic migraines. I really hope this helps with the exercise problem, since the general consesus seems to be that my blood vessels are the cause of my exercise headache. They aren't dilating correctly, so my brain isn't getting enough oxygen when I exercise, so I get a headache. And all of this has been caused by lovely Imitrex. So magnesium should hopefully help to reverse the effects of the Imitrex, and my exercising will go back to normal.
In other news, Anthony Monetti is my new role model and inspiration. (but he will never usurp the position of Der Jan).
But I am taking magnesium supplements now, and it's really helping. I have been reading online and found that lots of people with migraines have migraines because they have magnesium deficiencies, because magnesium helps to regulate blood flow in the blood vessels in the brain. So if you are proned to migraines and don't get enough magnesium, chances are you are going to have problems. So my doctor and I decided that it would be good for me to take magnesium every day, and since I started taking the magnesium I have noticed a difference. I haven't had the tension headaches I've been getting lately, and I just feel like there isn't that persisting pressure in my head all the time.
I read online that a study was done with people who have migraines, and these people were treated with just magnesium, and 85% of the people experienced immediate relief from their chronic migraines. I really hope this helps with the exercise problem, since the general consesus seems to be that my blood vessels are the cause of my exercise headache. They aren't dilating correctly, so my brain isn't getting enough oxygen when I exercise, so I get a headache. And all of this has been caused by lovely Imitrex. So magnesium should hopefully help to reverse the effects of the Imitrex, and my exercising will go back to normal.
In other news, Anthony Monetti is my new role model and inspiration. (but he will never usurp the position of Der Jan).
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
Heinz Ketchup!
So this is my new journal. I have abandonded my old deadjournal. If you want to read it, it's here: http://www.deadjournal.com/~leanne12345. I had it for many years, and it served me well, but it is time to move on. I haven't updated it since September either. It got kind of boring. But this is new and exciting!
And now I have an agenda for my postingzzzz. I'll be tracking my progress with my migraines, getting myself off of evil Immitrex (I will explain more in detail later), and hopefully getting myself back to point where I can workout however hard I want WITHOUT getting a pounding, pounding MIGRAINE after each workout.
Now for some ketchup..............(catch up).
Semester 1 at URI was decent. I did fairly well in my classes. I proved to myself that I can write successful essays that analyze literature, and I worked a lot at Bagelz (a coffeehouse). It was fun. I enjoyed it, but I think I drank too much coffee last semester. I also took a trip to Vermont with Jonathan with his fraternity for a weekend, which was one of the best weekends I have ever had. Being totally hammered by 5pm on a Friday (the day we arrived) and passing out by 11pm that Friday was freakin' awesome, and pretty hilarious.
This semester has been not so good, however. My classes are good. I enjoy them. They are definitely better than last semester's classes. But my headaches have gotten far worse. On December 27th I had an appointment with a neurologist to see if we could change the medication that I take daily to prevent the migraines (I was on Amitriptyline), because it started to not work anymore since I had been taking it every single day for about 5 years or so.
The biggest problem lately with my headaches (lately as in the past 1.5 years, since summer of 2005) is that I cannot have a successful and intense workout without having a huge migraine after the workout. Now this presents a huge problem for me, because I LOVE to exercise. And when I was going into my freshman year at Providence College, I joined the crew team there, so there was a very big problem facing me. And it sucked. Big time. But, as I always do, I ignored the problem. Instead of thinking, hm, since I get a massive migraine after EVERY workout, and it's NEVER been like this before, no matter how hard I work out, maybe I have a problem that ISN'T GOOD, I instead ignored the problem and took Immitrex, a common pain killer specific to migraines, to get rid of the headaches. Now, since I was on the crew team, that meant I was taking an Immitrex at least 4 days a week. Bad. It said the maximum should be 5-6 times a month. I didn't care though. I've had migraines my entire life. Once I get that migraine pain, I know that it means I will be bedridden for the rest of the night with a headache that makes me puke everything I've eaten throughout the day. I just wanted the pain to go away, so I took the Imitrex.
I have been doing this since the summer of 2005. Recently, however, the headaches have gotten far, far worse. They are more frequent, and they are more intense. Way more intense. More intense than they have ever been. Especially after exercise.
So I made an appointment to see a neurologist on December 27th. At first my doctor just suggested that my triggers (for the migraines) have changed, because that happens. Especially at my age and my gender. She just thought that now I have exercise induced migraines, which makes sense. So she put me on Topamax to take daily, because it has a huge success rate for curing headache induced migraines. She also said to continue taking Imitrex when I get headaches, and to increase the dosage from 50mg to 100mg. Now that I was off Amitriptyline, which also acted as a sleeping pill and lulled me to sleep every night, I at first had trouble sleeping at night, so I ended up getting migraines from not getting enough sleep.
Nothing has really changed too much, however. We increased the dose of Topamax from 25mg to 50mg to help with the exercise headaches, and that actually has helped a good deal. I can now work out at least a little bit more without getting a migraine. Not to my full capacity like before, but I can workout more without getting a headache!
The Imitrex, however, needs to go. It has caused more problems than it has solved, and from what I have read online from others who have taken it, it is a very dangerous medication to take, and with the amount that I took, which is by far WAY more than what these people were taking, I am extremely lucky not to have had anything serious (yet.....knock on wood) happen to me because of the Imitrex. There are tons of stories of people having massive heart attacks caused by taking Imitrex. People have had strokes. And then there hundreds like me, who took Imitrex to get better, but only had it make their headaches worse.
My neurologist told me that she thinks the Imitrex is the cause of the increase in frequency and intensity of my migraines lately, and the cause of getting migraines when I exercise because of the effects it has on your cardiovascular system. Based on reports online from people who took Imitrex even 1/4 as frequently as I did, they all said it was a miracle drug for a year, but after a year, their migraines increased terribly, and their triggers changed, and suddenly everything was a trigger. What would happen is that the Imitrex would be the long term cause of worse and more frequent headaches, but it was at the same time the only way to get rid of the headache, so youre treating your headache with the very thing that is causing the headache. The Imitrex gives you really bad headaches on a regular basis, so you take more Imitrex to get rid of it, and you get even MORE headaches, and the vicious cycle just repeats and repeats and repeats! The same thing happened to me. It sucks wicked bad. Wicked, wicked bad. So my neurologist and I have decided that Imitrex shall never enter my body again. I will just have to suffer through the stupid headache, or try to take Excedrin or Advil, but those don't do too much anymore because my body got used to them, and I would have to take higher doses, and I don't feel like needing a new stomach and a new liver when I am 30 years old.
And hopefully by ending the Imitrex intake, I can get my workout schedule back on track and this problem will correct itself. This has just been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. It is SO frustrating not to be able to workout like I want to. It's so frustrating not to be able to workout at all, which is what happened for a while. But it just sucks. When I am on the rowing machine, I want to push myself. I want to see if I can break 22 minutes for a 5k. Now I can't do that, because at the end of the workout, I will have a massive fucking migraine. And it's not because I am out of shape. 3 years ago I could work out like this. A year and a half later I suddenly can't because of massive migraines after? Give me a break. It fucking sucks, and I get so jealous of people I see in the gym working out as hard as they want without even the idea of a migraine EVER popping into their head. Then after their workout they get to get into their cars, with no headaches, and go get some good, satisfying food, without having to worry about nasuea from the headache from the workout they just had, and how that nasuea is ruining the awesome meal, and how you are basically wasting your money because you are just going to throw up that meal in an hour or so anyways from the massive migraine POUNDING IN YOUR HEAD ABOVE YOUR RIGHT EYE. Then the rest of your night is a bust because you can't do anything because you have to take an Imitrex and lie down for hours to get rid of the POUNDING IN YOUR HEAD ABOVE YOUR RIGHT EYE.
It is the most discouraging, frustrating feeling, and I never, ever want to feel that way again. I want this to be over with, and I don't think some people understand just how much this situation has been frustrating me in these past few months. Exercise has always been a way for me to vent. I can blow off steam. It's a healthy outlet, and it keeps me in check mentally. My mental health is really important, what with other stuff going on. If I can't have my exercise, it really fucks me up. I can talk to counselors, I turn to Buddha, I can turn to the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold path, and all the speeches Buddha gave, I can turn to yoga, I can turn to this and I can turn to that, but if I don't have exercise to be there for me when I just want to punch a wall, it's not good. Because I don't allow myself to punch the wall, and everything stays inside. Last year, for example, my exercise headaches weren't too too bad, so I had my exercise to help me, and last year I really, really needed it. Last year (last school year) was a rough year, and the exercise (and other things) really helped me out. Taking exercise away from me isn't fair, and I don't understand why it has to happen. But it doesn't matter. I am not going to let anything stop me from fucking exercising. This is ridiculous, and it's not going to happen. I crush the souls of the weak like Jan Ullrich, and I won't let some stupid fucking migraines tell ME I can't exercise. Fuck them. I will exercise if I want to, and I will beat the headaches. I will get my body to a point where I can exercise without worrying about you, stupid migraines.
So that is what I have been wanting to say on this situation for months now, and I am going to be tracking my progress in this journal (and updating about other stuff too). I will take note on all my workouts and how hard I exercise and if I get a headache or not, and if so, how bad it is, etc. And I will update about the progress with my neurologist and other things with my migraines.
Adios.
And now I have an agenda for my postingzzzz. I'll be tracking my progress with my migraines, getting myself off of evil Immitrex (I will explain more in detail later), and hopefully getting myself back to point where I can workout however hard I want WITHOUT getting a pounding, pounding MIGRAINE after each workout.
Now for some ketchup..............(catch up).
Semester 1 at URI was decent. I did fairly well in my classes. I proved to myself that I can write successful essays that analyze literature, and I worked a lot at Bagelz (a coffeehouse). It was fun. I enjoyed it, but I think I drank too much coffee last semester. I also took a trip to Vermont with Jonathan with his fraternity for a weekend, which was one of the best weekends I have ever had. Being totally hammered by 5pm on a Friday (the day we arrived) and passing out by 11pm that Friday was freakin' awesome, and pretty hilarious.
This semester has been not so good, however. My classes are good. I enjoy them. They are definitely better than last semester's classes. But my headaches have gotten far worse. On December 27th I had an appointment with a neurologist to see if we could change the medication that I take daily to prevent the migraines (I was on Amitriptyline), because it started to not work anymore since I had been taking it every single day for about 5 years or so.
The biggest problem lately with my headaches (lately as in the past 1.5 years, since summer of 2005) is that I cannot have a successful and intense workout without having a huge migraine after the workout. Now this presents a huge problem for me, because I LOVE to exercise. And when I was going into my freshman year at Providence College, I joined the crew team there, so there was a very big problem facing me. And it sucked. Big time. But, as I always do, I ignored the problem. Instead of thinking, hm, since I get a massive migraine after EVERY workout, and it's NEVER been like this before, no matter how hard I work out, maybe I have a problem that ISN'T GOOD, I instead ignored the problem and took Immitrex, a common pain killer specific to migraines, to get rid of the headaches. Now, since I was on the crew team, that meant I was taking an Immitrex at least 4 days a week. Bad. It said the maximum should be 5-6 times a month. I didn't care though. I've had migraines my entire life. Once I get that migraine pain, I know that it means I will be bedridden for the rest of the night with a headache that makes me puke everything I've eaten throughout the day. I just wanted the pain to go away, so I took the Imitrex.
I have been doing this since the summer of 2005. Recently, however, the headaches have gotten far, far worse. They are more frequent, and they are more intense. Way more intense. More intense than they have ever been. Especially after exercise.
So I made an appointment to see a neurologist on December 27th. At first my doctor just suggested that my triggers (for the migraines) have changed, because that happens. Especially at my age and my gender. She just thought that now I have exercise induced migraines, which makes sense. So she put me on Topamax to take daily, because it has a huge success rate for curing headache induced migraines. She also said to continue taking Imitrex when I get headaches, and to increase the dosage from 50mg to 100mg. Now that I was off Amitriptyline, which also acted as a sleeping pill and lulled me to sleep every night, I at first had trouble sleeping at night, so I ended up getting migraines from not getting enough sleep.
Nothing has really changed too much, however. We increased the dose of Topamax from 25mg to 50mg to help with the exercise headaches, and that actually has helped a good deal. I can now work out at least a little bit more without getting a migraine. Not to my full capacity like before, but I can workout more without getting a headache!
The Imitrex, however, needs to go. It has caused more problems than it has solved, and from what I have read online from others who have taken it, it is a very dangerous medication to take, and with the amount that I took, which is by far WAY more than what these people were taking, I am extremely lucky not to have had anything serious (yet.....knock on wood) happen to me because of the Imitrex. There are tons of stories of people having massive heart attacks caused by taking Imitrex. People have had strokes. And then there hundreds like me, who took Imitrex to get better, but only had it make their headaches worse.
My neurologist told me that she thinks the Imitrex is the cause of the increase in frequency and intensity of my migraines lately, and the cause of getting migraines when I exercise because of the effects it has on your cardiovascular system. Based on reports online from people who took Imitrex even 1/4 as frequently as I did, they all said it was a miracle drug for a year, but after a year, their migraines increased terribly, and their triggers changed, and suddenly everything was a trigger. What would happen is that the Imitrex would be the long term cause of worse and more frequent headaches, but it was at the same time the only way to get rid of the headache, so youre treating your headache with the very thing that is causing the headache. The Imitrex gives you really bad headaches on a regular basis, so you take more Imitrex to get rid of it, and you get even MORE headaches, and the vicious cycle just repeats and repeats and repeats! The same thing happened to me. It sucks wicked bad. Wicked, wicked bad. So my neurologist and I have decided that Imitrex shall never enter my body again. I will just have to suffer through the stupid headache, or try to take Excedrin or Advil, but those don't do too much anymore because my body got used to them, and I would have to take higher doses, and I don't feel like needing a new stomach and a new liver when I am 30 years old.
And hopefully by ending the Imitrex intake, I can get my workout schedule back on track and this problem will correct itself. This has just been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. It is SO frustrating not to be able to workout like I want to. It's so frustrating not to be able to workout at all, which is what happened for a while. But it just sucks. When I am on the rowing machine, I want to push myself. I want to see if I can break 22 minutes for a 5k. Now I can't do that, because at the end of the workout, I will have a massive fucking migraine. And it's not because I am out of shape. 3 years ago I could work out like this. A year and a half later I suddenly can't because of massive migraines after? Give me a break. It fucking sucks, and I get so jealous of people I see in the gym working out as hard as they want without even the idea of a migraine EVER popping into their head. Then after their workout they get to get into their cars, with no headaches, and go get some good, satisfying food, without having to worry about nasuea from the headache from the workout they just had, and how that nasuea is ruining the awesome meal, and how you are basically wasting your money because you are just going to throw up that meal in an hour or so anyways from the massive migraine POUNDING IN YOUR HEAD ABOVE YOUR RIGHT EYE. Then the rest of your night is a bust because you can't do anything because you have to take an Imitrex and lie down for hours to get rid of the POUNDING IN YOUR HEAD ABOVE YOUR RIGHT EYE.
It is the most discouraging, frustrating feeling, and I never, ever want to feel that way again. I want this to be over with, and I don't think some people understand just how much this situation has been frustrating me in these past few months. Exercise has always been a way for me to vent. I can blow off steam. It's a healthy outlet, and it keeps me in check mentally. My mental health is really important, what with other stuff going on. If I can't have my exercise, it really fucks me up. I can talk to counselors, I turn to Buddha, I can turn to the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold path, and all the speeches Buddha gave, I can turn to yoga, I can turn to this and I can turn to that, but if I don't have exercise to be there for me when I just want to punch a wall, it's not good. Because I don't allow myself to punch the wall, and everything stays inside. Last year, for example, my exercise headaches weren't too too bad, so I had my exercise to help me, and last year I really, really needed it. Last year (last school year) was a rough year, and the exercise (and other things) really helped me out. Taking exercise away from me isn't fair, and I don't understand why it has to happen. But it doesn't matter. I am not going to let anything stop me from fucking exercising. This is ridiculous, and it's not going to happen. I crush the souls of the weak like Jan Ullrich, and I won't let some stupid fucking migraines tell ME I can't exercise. Fuck them. I will exercise if I want to, and I will beat the headaches. I will get my body to a point where I can exercise without worrying about you, stupid migraines.
So that is what I have been wanting to say on this situation for months now, and I am going to be tracking my progress in this journal (and updating about other stuff too). I will take note on all my workouts and how hard I exercise and if I get a headache or not, and if so, how bad it is, etc. And I will update about the progress with my neurologist and other things with my migraines.
Adios.
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