One week ago–last Friday at about this time, actually–I got a mild headache that didn’t seem to respond to my normal course of acetaminophen. I had trouble sleeping that night, and when I woke Saturday morning the headache was still there. It stayed with me all day Saturday, and then all day Sunday, slowly growing worse by the hour.

I woke up exhausted Monday morning. I made my way into work and scheduled an appointment with my doctor for the next day. By late in the afternoon I was losing my ability to think and went home early. Lisa wanted to take me to the emergency room, but I said no and that I’d just go to the doctor the next day.

By early Tuesday morning I was in the bathroom throwing up. I made my way into my appointment and promptly found myself referred to the emergency room. I called Lisa, she met me at home, and we headed to Abbott Northwestern.

The diagnosis? I had either what was known as an adult onset migraine, or meningitis. A CT scan and a number of blood tests later, they were pretty sure I had a severe migraine, although they refused to call it that since “we don’t diagnose it as a migraine unless you’ve had two.” They sent me off with hydrocodone-acetaminophen pills–which I later found basically means Vicodin–and instructions to drink plenty of fluids. Despite it being dark outside, I wore my sunglasses.

The pills did little to ease my headache, but did a great job of exacerbating my nausea. In the course of 48 hours I threw up more than I had in 15 years. By late Wednesday I couldn’t even hold down water, and after one particularly gross episode in front of Lisa, we headed back out to Abbott. Despite being in a complete and total mental fog by that point, I found myself thinking about the high deductible I’d chosen for our family health insurance plan, and asked Lisa to redirect us to the urgent care center at Fairview/U of M instead.

And, holy crap, am I glad we did that. After putting me through the same battery of tests every other doctor had, the physician on duty concluded I had a migraine and offered a shot of Imitrex, which I accepted. It didn’t completely knock out my headache but within 20 minutes its severity dropped enough that I almost felt like myself again.

(There’s a problem with the 1-10 pain scale all of the doctors I met with asked me to use. Minds like mine can always imagine something worse than what’s currently being experienced, which inevitably leads 9 and 10 being reserved for the utterly ridiculous. For much of Tuesday-Thursday, I rated my pain at an 8.)

As we left Fairview, my headache was still kind of there, but lights and sounds no longer sent sudden jolts of pain through my brain. I got a good night’s sleep for the first time since Saturday, and while the morning greeted me with a headache we were able to knock it back with a simple dose of Excedrin Migraine. I spent Thursday recovering, even reading a bit, something that would’ve been impossible for me 24 hours earlier. I took a strategically-scheduled half day at work today (the half of the day being centered on when I’d have the least in the way of meetings and interactions), which allowed me to catch up while still getting me out and about a bit. I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, but I’m getting better.

I’ll probably write more about this over the next couple of days, and will likely make light of some of it in the process. If I don’t, I may end up being traumatized by it. I know that makes me sound like a wimp, but I have nothing to compare this to. The pain was bad, but the duration of the headache transformed it into something completely different. I hope I never have to deal with a migraine again, and now have a new of level sympathy I wouldn’t have been capable of just one week ago for those who regularly get them.

More later.