Sick Mom...

I woke up SOOO sick today, and I mean SOOOO sick. I woke up with a migraine. But I'm almost over it now. Yesterday was our family day and we spent it doing some good relaxing, then we went to the Tacoma Mall. We wanted to go to the zoo... so we drove that direction in case it stopped raining. The rain continued so we went to the Tocoma Mall to walk around. We found a few things on clearance that were a good deal and after a good bit of walking it was time to find dinner. Dan said he wanted to go to Olive Garden and take advantage of the Never-ending-pasta-bowl special before it ends. We went there, had a marvelous time with the children, had a terrefic waitress and a good meal. Then we went home, uneventfully. I first woke at 6am and didn't feel too bad... a little iffy in the head, but I went back to bed. Woke up a little later VERY VERY sick. It makes my whole body hurt.

Dan immediately pointed out that the last migraine I got was after eating at Olive Garden! Whoa...I realized he was right. I'll be avoiding that food for a long time. Dan came home from work for a few hours in the afternoon to help me out and get the children situated...in exchange, he's closing tonight to make up the hours. I'm feeling much better now, but words can't explain how awful a migraine feels if you've never had one.

For years and years I never had one. When I got my first one, I thought it was food poisoning because of all the vomiting and feeling like I'm going to die. Then it happened again about 6 months later and I thought....hmmm...food poisoning twice? And what about this horrific head pain? I began to realize it was a migraine. I never understood people who get migraines... I thought, how odd.... it's just a bad headache, right? NO! LOL No no no. I can still function with a bad headache... I can take Ibuprofin and get school done, I can get chores done. With a migraine the nausea and stomach cramps make you want to die (not really kidding)... and if I turn over in bed, 50% of the time, I'll have to go throw up. I'm not light sensitive, I'm audio sensitive so I feel and hear every noise that the children make. Every stomp, every raising of the voice, every plastic toy that bangs with another plastic toy. The head pain feels like it would be relieved if I could just take a small drill bit and drill through my skull to relieve the pressure.

When I'm that sick, nothing matters. That may sound bad, but it's true. There is no school, no cleaning, no going places. It's just NOT possible. Josiah missed his piano lessons today. There is NO functioning. You begin to really question life and what you're made of when you're in that much pain. I wince when I walk or move. You never know when you're going to throw up, it comes on SO suddenly...even if you haven't eaten. Anything you do eat/drink just sits in a lump because for some reason digestion stops completely...so you're so thirsty but the water just sits there in your stomach... only to be later thrown up. That means you're not absorbing any medicine that you try to take, so you can't get the pain to go away if it has gotten that far. If I can catch it before the vomiting stage and take some medicine, I can often stop it. But today that happened while I was asleep.

Well... I better quit. I by no means am trying to feel sorry for myself, I am thankful that this is my physical burden and not something like Crohn's disease, IBS, cancer or any of the other horrible conditions known to man. I almost called on some of my local lady friendstoday to help me out... to maybe take Keturah. But that sometimes is more difficult than just wading through it. Not that it's difficult to ask, no no, it's difficult to get the kids ready... answer the door, have your house look like mama's been sick all day, etc etc. Oh well, it always works out. Josiah is SUCH a big help... I couldn't do it without him. Words can't explain what that boy does for me. He does it so selflessly too... I don't even have to ask him at all, if I'm sick he just takes care of everybody... he gets them food, reads books to Turah, holds Malachi... and I don't even know it's happening until later. He is the best little boy I could ever ask for. I always reward him with something special after a hard day like today, whether it's a food treat, staying up late with mom and dad, a board game with just him, a movie of his choice... whatever. He's earned it.