September began on Thursday, and I went back to school.
Between whatever classes Mary and I had together, we wasted time out on the grass, or drinking coffee in the cafeteria. As time went by, it became increasingly obvious that we were doing a little more than sharing classes and chatting. We were adopting each other. Like going into a petstore and finding the perfect kitten; you’re suddenly compelled to take the thing home with you. It’s not a romantic thing [in most sane, welladjusted cases]; it simply becomes a matter of fact: This Animal Belongs with Me. This was the same situation; it just had larger mammals.
Friday was about the same. Except that it contained Western Torture, A to Z. But now we had this new problem: there’s no school on Saturday or Sunday.
To reiterate: I’ve got Susan the Subservient Psychotic lurking over near MerleHay and Franklin; Mary’s got her cowpainter. Actually, his name was Dean. Which isn’t really important, but he’s the only Dean ever to come near this story, and Dean has less letters in it than cowpainter has. So let’s run with it.
So, somewhere in this mess, we’ve got Dean and Susan and Mary and me, and this encroaching weekend. We therefore have a problem. And we need a solution.
There wasn’t one. At least, there wasn’t one we liked.
There was the obvious strategy: to go away and come back on Monday. But, while no one ever asked Dean or Susan what they thought of it, Mary and I hated that idea. Because, in a petstore on Friday, you can’t just go home and come back on Monday, because the kitten might not be there anymore.
I don’t make the rules. I just make the oddly perverse metaphors.
So, here’s what we did. And, if I say so myself, we were ahead of our time. We added the kitten to our cart.
It was that simple. We went home. But, we could call each other whenever, to make sure the kitten was still, like, available.
And it worked. A few phonecalls, just to…whatever…chat, I guess. Hi; still here; you still there? Great. Monday, then…. And we made it through our first day apart, then our second.
Our third was unexpected. I got a headache. And here’s where I want you to listen closely, because it’s important, for some reason, that you understand what a headache is.
A headache is a misnomer. A headache is in fact a paralysing eternal cruise through the Pirates of Hell Tour. I’ve had your headaches; I don’t care. I’ve had your hangovers; ooh: scary. When I get a headache, nothing happens ever the hell again.
Granting that I’m used to these things by now, forgive me if I downplay this somehow. That’s a message to younger people with chronic migraine who might feel insulted by a few of my lesser adjectives here.
It begins with a dull thudding, usually in the portside temple, which then spreads delicately behind and into the portside eye. This is nothing but an early warning system—like a monoxide alarm: something bad is about to happen; wherever you are, stop being there; get out and find a safe, dark place to be for eight to seventy-two hours. This is not a drill.
At the same time, the lights come up. The eyes start working too well, along with the ears. In my case, being colourblind anyway, I’ve already got nightvision verging on infrared. That said, a single candlepower will begin to fade to white, stranding you on that planet in Pitch Black. Before the eclipse. Maneating alien bats optional. A clock ticking five rooms away will expand toward fifty decibels.
We’re okay, for a moment. It’s simply a casual warning that it’s time to prepare for the storm.
The headache spreads. The dull thudding behind the eye spams its way out into the rest of the intranet. At this point, it may go up, back, or both. Up is best, since it isolates the pain into a single spot. There’s still the temple and the eye, of course; but that’s pretty minimal. But now it’s directly at the top of the skull, along the flat part between the front and the back. And it starts pushing, trying to get out.
Initially, it’ll still be pulsing. Mostly. Not quite like a drumbeat; more like a piano. One quarternote per measure. As the last of the warning. Then a halfnote. Finally a wholenote, arching over the bar to the next wholenote; it’s still a pulse, but it never really goes away.
And, finally, a single, droning pain. Not a piano anymore, but a pipeorgan. Probably in that annoying C# of a mosquito. But usually lower, like the fourth key up from the bottom.
This is bestcase. It can be a lot worse.
Worse is when it may or may not rest up there on the top, but works its way into the base of the skull. Because that’s a network hub. From there, it’s able to spread halfway down the spine, out into the shoulders, and wherever else it likes. Meaning that, now, everything above the spleen is in a perpetual charliehorse.
But, don’t despair. We have partyfavours.
The body, being endothermic but stupid, gets confused, becoming both hot and cold at once. To defeat one, you’ve got to give additional power to the other. But choose wisely. Helping yourself become warmer, you’ll increase the pain itself; helping yourself become colder, you’ll shiver, adding more pulsing above the constant droning. Meaning that there’s actually no right answer.
Now, as a quirky symptom to all this, comes the nausea. Curiously, this isn’t a bad thing. For some unexplainable reason, yarfing out everything you’ve eaten since the Nixon Administration lessens the overall pressure of the headache itself. Unfortunately, it adds to the pulsing, like shivering does; but, once it’s over, the pulsing can die away and you’re left with a slightly lesser endless C# to deal with.
However.
There does come a point when a final symptom makes the whole ordeal slightly uncomfortable. That’s when the entire system collapses, paralysing the host.
So now, hopefully, you’ve got to a safe, dark place. Because that’s as far as you’ll ever get. Fingers go numb. Muscles spasm. Arms and legs stop working. Now you’re a head with nothing more than pain and five feet of useless cargo beneath it. Which is really fun if you haven’t already yarfed up everything you’d ever eaten; that can still happen, just, not where you’d prefer it to occur.
That’s basically it. All that’s left to endure now is the next eight to seventy-two hours, where each second seems to last for days.
Here’s why it’s important that you understand all that. Because, due to a headache, I didn’t get to school to see Mary on Monday.