My Trip

That title, My Trip, makes me feel like I've just returned from summer vacation, about to start the second grade and have been given a writing assignment to talk about something I did during my summer break. This trip, was actually a quick business trip I had to take this past week.

I'll start with the fun filled weekend before while preparing for the trip. I don't travel often any longer so I'm not as ready for trips any longer plus this trip was with people who were at my boss' level and higher with a couple of people at my level. Last weekend started off with with my Migraine trigger filled grocery trip. Luckily, I have learned to manage this much better than I used to handle them. My next plans were to do laundry, pack and see what else I needed for my trip so I could enjoy my Mother's Day the next day.

My weekend plans were very short lived. As I started preparing for these domestic duties, my power went out. We were having extremely forceful winds where many of the counties in my state had many different areas that lost power. The next morning, still no power. I even contemplated going to my sister's just to finish laundry and shop for the little things I still needed while on the way to her house, but since she lives about an hour away, that would be a lot of precious time lost. Luckily before I started to make alternate plans, my power went back on. Yeah!

As I was running around picking up some last minute items, that is when I got a textbook Migraine with aura. The aura hit, then a short time after, the Migraine which I was able to take care of before it got too out of hand. I really didn't want to treat anything during the weekend as the trip was going to be too trigger filled. I hadn't realized how much room my Migraine medications would take while packing either. Before this trip even started, I was faced with too many Migraine triggers - stress, lack of sleep, stress, lights, stress, forgot to eat, stress, etc. Oh, did I mention stress and that I also needed to figure out a way to get my son home from school while I was away? I know stress isn't really a trigger, but it will exasperate the many triggers that were present for me.

After a few conference calls on Monday morning, I left for my two hour drive to the never been to before airport. Actually, the travel went very well getting to my destinations. I met my boss at the airport as his flight landed within a half hour of mine. I looked forward to kicking back as he drove to our city, but that's not what ended up happening.

There was some type of a mix up with his drivers license so guess who needed to do ALL of the driving? Yup, me. Yuck. I typically like driving, just not in this type of a scenario, but at least I got the satisfaction of teasing him every chance I could get which is not something I normally would do plus I got the scare him a few times. Hehehe.

The next morning, I asked him for a favor at breakfast. I took off my Migraine mask (I like to hide my Migraines even before I have them) and told him my fear about the room we would be sitting in. I explained how I typically pick my seat in a room is based on the lighting. He listened and just said he would follow my lead and would let me pick the seat. Good thing he listened. As soon as we got to the building, we were split up and he ended up picking where we sat. I have to say, he really did a good job for the room.

This was all good, but when the nighttime came, I started having problems with one of my prodrome symptoms that I can't stand! I don't even like talking, but I can't stop talking and will talk way too much even though my inner voice is yelling to shut up sometimes when I am in prodrome. I already told you the levels of who was on this trip and many of these people I had never met before which typically keeps me very quiet to begin with. Sure enough, the next morning I found myself taking a triptan (very early) to try to relieve my head and make it through the day desperately hoping to keep some semblance of normal cognitive function.

This next day was a different story around the conference rooms as we found ourselves in a new conference room which had a whole bunch of round tables. When we entered the room, there was one other person already in there. Of course my boss just sat down there next to the other person. I tried and sat with them for a little while and then finally got up to move. There was absolutely no way I was even going to make it in that seat for a half an hour. I wasn't rude or anything and explained to the other person that I have light sensitivities and needed to move to a different table. My boss did catch on to my issue as he knew I wanted to be as discrete as I could be around my 'sensitivity'. From a personal standpoint and as much as I would love to, this is not the place to educate people about Migraines. Since we were also there early enough, I was able to play with the dimmer switches for the lights after I moved my seat and made the room exactly as I needed it to be. Yeah!

I won't go into my journey back home that night as I sat on the plane because of some air traffic squabbling, with screaming kids all around or my two hour ride back home after we landed, but I was real happy to be back home and in my own bed where I could start to catch up (eventually) on all of the sleep I had just lost.

When will we be able to handle everyday normal things without the fear of pain hanging over our heads? When will we be able to go on a quick trip without having to bring our drugstores with us? Without the fear of forgetting any of our meds? Without the fear of being incapacitated with pain and other symptoms? Without worrying about these 'nonsense' things that are so normal to everyone else?

I am still recovering from my trip, but will hopefully be back to myself tomorrow. This really is ridiculous.