were you looking for me?

Despite its being Holidailies season, I didn't post all weekend long. I have a good excuse: I spent more than 24 hours with no access to a computer. My cell phone was out in my car and I used it once, to make sure my husband knew where I was and what was going on. No internet access. No TV. Just 24 hours of movies. And then when I got home I was rather sleep-deprived, although I did post an entry elsewhere about part of the experience. Go read it, it's much better than anything I'm posting on this site today.

I'll probably write more about the film-marathon experience elsewhere, but I wanted to share a personal tidbit here that's not appropriate for a film article or blog entry. One of the preparations I took in advance of the big event was to make sure I had enough migraine and headache medication. I get migraines a lot, and movies are sometimes a trigger. (I remember watching Seven Samurai with one of the worst, unfortunately.) I couldn't bear the thought of trying to survive a movie marathon with a migraine, or tension headache, or sinus headache, and not have anything to make it better. I ended up having to see the doctor to get one prescription refilled. I actually told her why I was in a hurry to get the refill, and she told me that it sounded like a terribly unwise thing for someone who got frequent migraines (the erratic sleep hours can also be a trigger), but she was nonetheless amused.

Here's the weird thing: I didn't have even the faintest twinge of a headache during the entire 24 hours. No pre-migraine symptoms. No throbbing. No sensitivity to light. Nothing. I mean, I felt a little icky in the wee hours of the morning, but correctly assumed I'd feel all better once I had some breakfast. My eyes hurt a bit, but I took breaks during the less interesting films and everything was fine.

This intrigues me -- what does it mean? Of course, migraines and headaches are capricious and you never really know what the trigger might be, and known triggers don't always cause migraines, blah blah blah. But it makes me stop and think: what didn't happen during those 24 hours? The obvious answer is that there was a complete lack of anything stressful. I didn't have to worry about anything more serious than how to keep my butt from hurting after sitting in the same seat for so long. Seeing such a direct connection between my migraines and my stress levels is a little bit scary. There may be other factors -- I suspect that I normally spend too much time staring at bright white computer screens, and there are definitely some food triggers out there -- but this weekend gave me an unexpected lesson to consider.

Posted at December 11, 2006 07:24 PM