On ending migraines

[I've not posted this partly because I don't want to jinx it, but at the same time- good news!]

Excellent news even- I have a non-drug remedy for my headaches.

It may have had something to do with:

- a bunch of physio appointments to un-stick a few vertebrae in my neck;
- a few (possibly ineffectual) acupuncture visits with same physiotherapist;

And it definitely had to do with:

- 9 days away at the Quaker confab, including some sort of "stress reset button" when I got handed an entirely different things to fixate on for the time there;
- five minutes with my friend Amy, who is an acupuncturist/acupressure practitioner.
- other factors, such as the very mellow massage I got from peaceofpie.

But the real biggie was Amy's accupressure points- on Tuesday morning I mentioned to her I was disappointed that the acupuncture back home hadn't had any positive effect, and she said, why don't you try pressing your thumb fingernail on your other hand right [here] in the web next to your thumb? On the right hand if the pain's behind your left eye, and vice-versa? So I did, and blam, the headache went away in under 5 minutes of pressing on my hand! Woah.

I got goosebumps. And the headache came back, and I did it again, and it went away again.

I had read about those pressure-points before, and tried them, to no effect, but I wasn't pressing hard enough, and I didn't have the right part of my hand.

All week I expected the migraines to come back just as bad. Instead they came milder and easier to get rid of. Like magic. And maybe there was magic involved; I don't know what all my friends were doing for me there... :)

All the old triggers are still triggers: not enough sleep, stress... But the pressure-points win over both of them. Wow.

Wednesday as an experiment I spent the afternoon in sun without sunglasses, and I got a dull headache. Yes, a boring dull headache- the kind I remember getting before the migraines took over a few years ago.

The other big factor is stress- on Saturday morning I was feeling quite stressed about travel and having to re-enter normal life again- and the migraine went away with the pressure points, but I found I could affect how it came back, by doing bits of meditation and by telling myself sensible things like "I don't need to do everything on my todo list on the day I get back." "I won't forget my passport again, I've already checked it's in my pocket." And so on.

This has felt like a successful science experiment- at this point I'm dealing with figuring out what I should do with the stress-factors so that they don't even get me to the headaches.

And also, it still feels like magic. And I have yet another thing to be grateful for.

rollover

My odometer today read 229.11, which means 6,229, which is 10,000 km. So I reset it to measure km. Only 7 years and 11 months after we moved here!...