Let me tell you something…

The first time I had a migraine I though it was quite possible that I was actually having a stroke. Not knowing how the onset of one began, I had fled my design class at collage thinking  that I had somehow, unknowingly, been slipped a heroic does of barbiturates. My hands seemed to be on strings, unattached to my body, my head in a bright cloud, unable to process any thought beyond “why do my hands seem to be on strings?”  or “why is my head in a white cloud?”.

As my vocabulary seemed to have regressed to that of a drunken home schooled five year old, I excused myslef from my class with an “umgh…mmm… ah”. I’m pretty sure it took me 28 minutes to work out how to pick up some pens and put them in my bag and turn off my computer and I walked out into the brightest retina shredding light I’d ever seen.

After working out (extremely slowly) that I’d not gone to heaven just yet, my brain managed to get over the fact that something was seriously wrong with my spacial awareness, speech, reflexes and now diminishing sight and decided it would be a good idea for me to to drive home to sleep, whatever it was that was happening to me, off.

Needless to say, driving, partially blind with numb hands with a brain process that  seemed to be struggling with picking up biro’s, is not the brightest idea on the planet. This coupled with a strange inability to read road signs or act accordingly to them and a massive blank in the part of my memory marked “how to get home”, was going to make for an intersting afternoon.

After atempting a few roundabouts in the wrong direction, washing my windows everytime I wanted to turn left or right, getting off the motorway 3 exits too early and spilling half a bottle of warm water down the front of my shirt thanks to my now completely useless arms, I finally pulled into the driveway of my house.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of the house and my face (which was now completely numb at this point) looked like a sloppily made, uncooked pie. Cursing myself (“grrr…nah…maagh!”) for having more keys than a prision warden on my chain I finally made it into the house. And just as pins and needles burned and pricked all over my face and neck and brain I collapsed onto the couch, the buring feeling eventually falling away to leave the most unbelievable searing pain.

I woke up 18 hours later with a headache that can only be described as the end of the world condensed into the head of a slow pounding hammer against a piece of old meat. I was in the same position, my front door was standing wide open and the imprint of a remote control patterned my left cheek for the rest of summer.

So next time you pinch the bridge of your nose and say to me; “Yeeesh, I’ve got such a migraine..”

Know this.

You haven’t.