On asking the right questions

It was the summer of 2019 and life was going as expected. All was well until a strange visitor arrived at my doorstep.

I am not one known to be sickly save the occasional flus to usher in the wintery season or the ones that remind me that winter had been brutal. Even when my body fought its strange visitors, going to bed usually sorted out whatever ill feeling it was battling with.

However, this stranger was undefeated and strange. I returned from work on this fateful evening with a strange migraine. It was lurking on one side of my head, dislodged behind one eye and bearing the weight of my brain and the universe with it. I couldn’t explain the excruciating pain nor could I explain where it came from.

I sat on the longest sofa in the living room trying to find relief, the lady of the house returned home from work also to find me in a strange situation and whilst I was trying to be macho about it, I kept telling myself all I needed was sleep.

I wondered if the workout in the gym was to blame or maybe it was the screen time from work earlier but the more I processed these thoughts, the worse the pain became. I reached out to my wife as she was preparing dinner and she administered paracetamol for the migraine.

An hour must have passed and still I had no relief. The sofa didn’t help matters as it wasn’t generous enough to take the length of my body frame. I blamed the dimensions of the sofa, I blamed the noises from outside, I blamed the lights in the living room, I blamed the paracetamol for false advertising — all I wanted was relief.

I must have started dozing off when my wife woke me up to eat dinner. I was partly livid that she disrupted my well deserved sleep but the well spiced fish was also insipid — something that my true self couldn’t understand.

I dropped the plate after a few bites and carried my pounding head in my hands into the bedroom upstairs and finally found sleep. The pain killer probably worked. Who knows? All that mattered was that I slept and voila… migraine fixed.

This was not the end but just the beginning. Woke up feeling fresh the next morning, life continued as was expected and by the time I got back home, it was a repeat of previous evening’s marlakey.

I just didn’t understand why this was happening again. I found pain killers and again it took almost 2 hours before they kicked in…. a timeframe of pain I wouldn’t wish for my enemies. It was basically, an eternity.

By the third day, things took a different turn. I noticed as I was driving to work that looking into the skyline ahead of me was too much to bear for my head. It was as thought a bag of rocks were tied to my pupils. The pain was excruciating yet I still had to drive. Sunglasses helped a bit.

Furthermore, I became the dude walking into work with my sunglasses on and wearing it all morning much to the discomfort of annoying questions from everyone that passed by my desk. Just mind your business — I’m not hung over nor do I have a black eye nor did I run into a lamp post. Okay, I digress.

When I got home from work eventually, the migraine was still there but was not as intense as previous days.

However, I started noticing dizzying patterns each time I looked at a bright space, a bright light, a plain white wall (doesn’t help that all the walls in the living room were white) or at the TV.

My medical wife pointed out to me that it’s called an aura and suggested I went to the GP the next day — which I did first thing in the morning.

The elderly gentleman was patient to listen to my recounting of events but also had this apprehensive posture that said ‘I got this! I know what to do’.

After the normal history taking questions, he asked me to do a lot of silly things (a neurological exam, the Mrs later told me it was). Mr G.P was defeated as he had no explanation for my migraines. I had passed the exam and all other outcomes weren’t as expected.

Because I had mentioned the Auras that my vision was now graced with, he suggested I had an eye test done and wrote a prescription for a migraine preventive drug.

I was to use the drug a few hours before when I would normally experience it. Well, it worked that evening and I was able to get an eye test booked for the next afternoon.

The Aura didn’t stop but at least, I was pain free. The day after, I had researched what kind of glasses frames I would like to adorn my face with. I was thinking the clear glass RayBanns Wayfarers would suit my face. It was in my basket and as soon as I got a prescription, it would be good to go.

At SpecSavers that afternoon, the optician lady started all her tests. Surprisingly, it was fun but like her other medical colleague before her, she also was defeated.

The good news was that I wouldn’t need a prescription as my eye sight was perfect. The bad news was that she didn’t know what was going on either.

In my mind, it was £25 and an hour wasted. Mind you, the GP had said if the eye test was futile, I might have to get a MRI scan done. So I sat there wondering what was going on as this lady put her tools and machines away. Was this something much more malignant than I had presumed? Was this what old age felt like? So many question; not too many answers.

Back to the Optician — she sat with me and started asking me further questions. Had anything changed lately with my lifestyle? Have I done this or that? Had I changed my soap? A lot of questions.

Also a lot of ‘No’s were flying across the room from my mouth until she mentioned DIET.

Oh… wait a minute… Yes I had been on a diet for about 3 weeks. It was no choice of mine to make. I am, afterall, a man under authority and whatever my wife says to do, I do. She had insisted we did a cleanse diet because she was. As a loving husband, I was in full support. She gestured the motions of relief and inquired to know the details of the diet. She then smiled and said “Your body is upset with you for depriving it of things it was used to”.

She suggested I went across the road to the Gelato parlour, destroy a big tub of Ice cream and I should be fine.

To be honest, I was disappointed in her. ‘These medical folks have got jokes’, I thought in my mind. Anyways, I dragged my feet reluctantly out of their shop, paused midway to step into the Gelato parlour, contemplated securing a sick leave at work and wondered how quickly a scan could be done but for now, Gelato it was. No one was going to be hurt from ice-cream. Tomorrow’s worry would sort itself out tomorrow.

I found a corner of the parlour, sat with the ice cream tub and chilled for a few more minutes to catch up on work messages and social media. Then I walked back to my car …. without the sunglasses I had had on all morning. That didn’t register in my mind.

I went home and was dreading that 5pm to 7pm timeframe when the migraines usually started but I felt like me all afternoon…. again NOT REMEMBERING TO PUT ON MY SUNGLASSES.

The migraines didn’t arrive as dreaded and Iforgot to take the prescribed preemptive pills. It wasn’t until I was recounting the events of the day to my wife that I realised the optician was probably right.

I returned to work the next day and all was well. No headaches.. no aura… no evening migraine. Actually, SHE WAS RIGHT!!!

All that fixed this ordeal was just sugar — plain simple sugar.

The diet continued till it ran its course but I had a chocolate bar handy every few days as insurance just in case… you know what not.

The wrong questions would lead us down a rabbit-hole but the right questions might help bring clarity to our situation. Improve on the quality and depth of your questions.

Overthinking is never going to make things better. It can be a canopy to protect you from the help you need to get out of your own limitations.

Our bodies understand routine but can relearn a new one albeit with resistance. We should stop making excuses for lifestyle changes that would benefit our bodies.

It might be easy at first resistance to give up but with the right line of thinking, we might find inventive ways to stay the course till we achieve all our minds are set to achieve!

Good luck and Godspeed.

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