Many days ahead of time, I got a migraine. That is nothing new for me. I tried all my usual tricks to end it, but with no luck. On the 13th I broke down and went to the doctor. At this point I had been trudging through for 5 days. There is a very simple old school pain medicine that I have been taking for about 8 years that works really well for me. I take one, go to sleep, and wake up back to my regular self. Usually the doctor gives me 30 pills and it lasts me about 2 1/2 years. I've been out for a few months now and managing fine, but it was clearly time for a refill. I made an appointment and went among the sick and contagious under the extremely bright fluorescents braved a world full of smells to hear a chirpy little PA tell me that they don't prescribe that medicine anymore because it rarely works on migraines. I tried explaining that it has worked on mine for 8 years, but she wasn't having it. Then she tells me of this magical land of migraine medication outside of the one I had tried with a horrible reaction. By now the glaring lights and smell of disinfectant had gotten to me, worn me down, and I agreed to try something new. I just wanted to stop hurting and really didn't care what did it. From there I went to the pharmacy with a lighter step hoping that relief would soon be mine. I asked the pharmacist how much this new wonder drug was going to cost me. Please keep in mind that my old medication cost me $10 for 30 pills that lasted over 2 years. My new script that might not even work was for 10 pills. I know the pharmacist kept saying numbers after the words "three hundred", but I couldn't tell you what they were because I think I had a mini stroke or maybe blacked out with rage.
After I fought off the urge to return to the doctor's office with a box of matches, I calmly called the nurses line and left a message explaining why this would not work for me. She called back and suggested the drug that I had already had a bad reaction to (eye twitching). Since the nurse can't control what the doctor prescribes she said she'd have to talk with them and get back to me. That didn't happen for a full week, well beyond the "too little, too late" mark. Instead I took an over the counter medication which took the edge off long enough for me to sleep, but comes with an ugly price for my stomach the next day.
I awoke Valentine's Day with my head still hurting, my stomach singing me the song of it's people (a song that demands the acoustics of the bathroom), and a general bad attitude because once again a doctor had refused to listen to common sense (don't mess with what works) and left me in pain for yet another day.
Three days after Valentine's I agreed to attend a banquet for church teens and parents. It had a Valentine theme, but it was three days later and included kids. Surely this would be okay. Yeah, not so much. Rocky waited a full week and a half to get the cold the rest of us had already recovered from. He had almost no voice and a general feeling of being run over by a truck. Pitiful really. I hate it when he feels bad. I also hate that the kids were already set on going and I went to the banquet dateless. The topic of the talk that night was dating, not my best subject. I gave Nix permission to date twice as many guys as I did. For some reason she wasn't excited by that. Probably because she is good at math and knows that still only equals 2.
It turns out that Rocky had just forgotten to take his allergy medicine for awhile, so he is fine now. All in all, it wasn't bad. A little pain, some sniffles, and memories of my dateless teen years is pretty good in comparison.
Please laugh. I did. It is just another year of weird, out of our hands, bad Valentines.
