This is an officially whiny health post. This is your opportunity to move on.

As many of you know, I used to get a lot of migraines. Several a month, sometimes a few a week. Enough to qualify for preventive meds (though they never really worked). I tried a bajillion things, from diet changes to exercise to acupuncture to drugs to identifying and avoiding triggers... Most things seemed to work a little, maybe, but not always. Which was worse than not at all because I was hesistant to give them up, except at some point I was devoting way too much time trying to prevent them, and I gave in to taking prescription meds for them more often than I'd like. Migraines are, in short, caused by tons of stuff and no one understands them well.

I was terrified of getting pregnant, since I would be cut off from the meds and would have a 50% chance of them getting worse. But I hit the jackpot and instead they disappeared entirely for the duration. It was awesome. And it lasted after the birth. I started getting some again after I went back to work, but it was far far less than it had been. I participated in a diary study that showed that I get them from dehydration (a common cause), but with a *2 day* lag, which is why I'd never identified it. That helped manage them further.

Until last week. Today I had my 6th migraine in 8 days. You only get 9 pills per month, and the other option to make them go away is caffeine, which I am hyper hyper sensitive to. Not treating them just causes a cycle where they are more likely to come back. After 3 or 4, I launched into the heavy doses of Aleve for several days in a row trick that the fancy headache docs in NYC told be to use to break a cycle, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

I'm not sure what to do and I can't figure out what the hell changed. It seems goofy, but the only thing I feel like I can pin it on is that it started the day Rebecca and I went to see Trouble the Water, which is an awesome documentary about Katrina, that includes a lot of footage from a handheld camcorder by a woman actually trapped in the 9th Ward during the storm. It made us both so nauseated we had to leave halfway through, and it took us several hours to recover.

Along with the nausea, my head hurt as well, and I know the worst migraine I ever had came from watching a movie from too close. Could the film by itself have actually triggered a migraine cycle this hard to break? It seems a little incredible, but I'm short on options. Of course I also don't know what it would mean about what I should do if it were the case. Except not watch any more documentaries with amateur footage, which I had already decided.

I'll probably seek out some chiropractics and massage and maybe up the Aleve dose even higher. Eh. This is not a request for suggestions, just a whine. I had a taste of freedom from this and I like it. Sigh.