Who's The Daddy: When your worst affliction becomes your child’s
Let’s face it, migraines are absolutely nobody’s idea of a good time. And when you pass them on to your children, like some sort of demented inheritance, it makes them even worse.
Yours truly has been cursed since a religious studies lesson at a bog-standard comprehensive school in South Cumbria in 1983. Back then it was a numb face, loss of speech and being extravagantly sick.
And this affliction has now been passed down to Daughter #1. And for that I am truly sorry.
Last week at work the tell-tale signs started about 4pm, with blurred vision in my left eye at about 9 o’clock. The best way to describe it is like a smudge on your phone screen or one of the lenses on your glasses.
Soon after that, the real fun starts. Within a couple a minutes what you’re reading stops making sense, even six-word headlines on a news website are just a jumble.
About 10 minutes later I start speaking in Cornish and pretty soon can’t think of words, which is pretty debilitating when you edit them for a living. This usually lasts for an hour.
After that, the rest of the day is pretty much a write-off. Taking medication that contains codeine helps, but it doesn’t stop the firework display that takes place an inch in front of your eyes, or the panic that sets in as you wonder if this is just another migraine or something worse.
After a while, when you can form cohesive thoughts and speak a bit, you think it’s all OK. Sometimes a wave of euphoria washes over you, but then the postdrome kicks in which can be best be described in a shorthand way as a two-day hangover. Woolly-headed, confused and low mood. An absolute pleasure to be around.
Anything else? Oh yeah, they often come in clusters. So if you’ve had one, chances are more will follow in the next few days.
Daughter #1 knows this only too well. Many’s the time I picked her up from school 10-15 years ago after a phone call from a friendly office manager to say she’s got a migraine and needs to go home. I’d pick her up, we’d drive home in silence and she’d crawl into bed to sleep it off.
So what causes them? Your guess is as good as mine, but triggers include stress, not enough sleep, too much sleep, eating a teensy bit of a raw red onion, moving from bright sunlight into a dark room, dark chocolate, going too long without eating, bright headlights on modern cars, coffee (sometimes just the smell of it), too much green tea, the list goes on, but none of it caused by what you’d call a reckless lifestyle.
But it’s not just debilitating brain farts I’ve cursed our children with. One of the only drawbacks of being tall is back injuries, and Daughter #2 felt the family’s pain three months into a five-month stint working on a cruise ship around the Caribbean.
Being 5ft 11ins and sleeping on a bunk bed in a shared cabin the size of a bathroom is asking for trouble, and so it proved when Daughter #2’s back went “ping” last weekend, 4,000 miles away from home.
With US healthcare being what it is, the ship’s doctors gave her an industrial-strength muscle relaxant and an anti-inflammatory and sent her on her way. We’ve had better weeks.
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