Take Two and Call Me in the Morning

If you are among the lucky 36 million Americans out there who experience migraines, you know how important your migraine medicine is to you.  For me, I hold my Excedrin Migraine in high regard.  In under a half hour, I can go from pain-induced nausea and protective head-cradling to happy, sleepy-time nightie-nights.  It works that well for me.

Hello, my love.

For certain, I'll end up nauseous, not from the residual effects of the migraine, but from the way that medicine tears up my stomach.  I don't mind, though.  Which is worse:  skull-pounding pain, nausea, and (inevitably) a failure to function or just plain old nausea?

I've lived through the 1st trimester of pregnancy three times.  I've seen my share of nausea, and it's a piece of cake compared to the horrors that a migraine can bring.

That was all preface to where I'm headed with this post.

I ran out of my beloved Excedrin last week.  My mental note to buy a refill went unnoticed until, of course, my head started pounding three days ago.  Truthfully, I wasn't too concerned, because I was already taking Nyquil for a cold and I'm not one for fancy drug cocktails.  So I warmed up the hot sock and hunkered down for some deep tissue meditation to "think" my headache away (don't knock it, sometimes it works).

And work, it did!  I woke up the next morning, happy and alert.

But then it came back.  With a vengeance.

By 5pm (quittin' time), I was the kind of miserable you only feel when you've suffered all day long and are now facing the prospect of going home to start your night job as cook, referee, and tutor.  There was no forgetting to stop off at CVS to pick up that refill this time.  So off I went, holding on to that glimmer of hope that relief was on the horizon.

But CVS was sold out of Excedrin.  Completely empty shelf.  Fuuuudge...

I changed course and headed over to Rite Aid.  Nothing there either.  Genius that I am, I wandered over to the pharmacist and asked them if they had any in the back.  That's when my world came tumbling down as she uttered these five words:

"No ma'am, Excedrin's been recalled."

NOOOOOOO......  Actually, it was more like "noooooo...." (as my head was pounding considerably, so even my thoughts had to be quiet).  I pathetically asked what I could take as a substitute, and she pointed me in the direction of their generic headache formula.  Desperate, I was in no position to be choosy.  Once in the car, I found a bottle of water that had been rolling around for who knows how long and choked down two tablets.  Then I began waiting, hoping for it to work.

Now, my beloved Excedrin has a way of working like a light switch.  I usually can pinpoint the exact moment that it kicks in, when the headache lifts and the sun peeks through the clouds.  It's always a glorious moment for me.  I wasn't expecting that from my RiteAid plain brand "headache medicine".  And it didn't happen.  But that's not to say the medicine didn't work.  Not only did it work, it worked quite well.  And it gave me a happy little mood lift as a bonus perk.  I do believe about an hour after taking it, I caught myself skipping from the living room to the kitchen.  It had to be the caffeine.  Whatever.  I felt goooood.

But dumb ME, I forgot about the stomach part.  And about an hour after my rainbow trippin' I noticed that I was nauseous.  Very nauseous.

So I guzzled some milk, in a pitiful afterthought attempt to appease my stomach.  No luck.  I followed it with some waffles, you know, to soak up all those acids that were bubbling away in there.  Still no luck.  But those waffles were really good, and apparently, not even a chemically induced nausea can get in the way of my appetite.  With a full, but nauseous stomach, I ended up going to bed (this time with the hot sock on my stomach), where I fought back the waves all night.

You may be wondering, "what is this 'hot sock' that she keeps mentioning?"  They're God's gift to the women in my family, that's what they are.  We live, breathe, and die by these things.  I'll have to post about our unnatural attachment to them one day.  For now, here's a picture of my favorite one. 

Notice the gold luster?  It's getting ready to work it's magic.

Back to the topic at hand.   Was there a point to this post?  No, I guess not.

In closing, I'd like to regain control of my brain and summarize my thoughts with these few thoughts:  migraines suck, the makers of Excedrin better fix this problem fast, Rite Aid makes a pretty good generic headache medicine, and always remember to drink a glass of milk with your painkillers.


*Disclaimer: I am not a medical practitioner, licensed homeopathist, or even a school nurse.  So take medication at your own risk.






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