Another headache.

[moderately_mad]

Our son had a vicious headache just a little while ago. He's either sleeping, or nearly sleeping, on the window-seat now.

We took him to see X-Men III tonight. (Which was a darker movie than I expected.) We drove into Anoka, picked up his sister and went off on our outing. He seemed fine through the movie, if a little tired on the way home

Comments

[plantgirl]

I'm glad you had a nice birthday, and sorry that your son isn't feeling well. Poor guy.

Has keeping records started to show you any correlation between his diet & the headaches? Or extensive exposure to loud noises/flashy lights (such as the movie)?

[moderately_mad]

Yes, keeping track has helped a lot, I think. Like most problems, the headaches seem to have multiple triggers. By that I don't mean that any one of a number of factors causes one, but rather that there seems to be a threshold number of events. I know that the most reliable trigger is lack of sleep. It alone, however, doesn't seem to automatically lead to pain. Combine sleeplessness WITH something like a lot of junk food and/or emotional stress and/or heat and/or highly stimulating experiences and BOOM ... we've created a headache.

I've also learned that they are rarer than I thought they were ... at least for my son. (My husband seems to have one at least once a month but, more often, once a weekend. They haven't been very bad lately tho' -- thank God.) It looks like Ch-- has a hum-dinger about once a season along with another one or two "mild" headaches that he heads off with an unexpected nap or quiet-time.

[wren08]

Something about this sounds off... is throwing up common when he has a head ache?

[moderately_mad]

Yes, actually. When his migraine is bad, throwing up seems to somehow signal the beginning of the end of it. It's not uncommon. In fact, it's one of the reasons that we know it's a migraine as opposed to a tension headache or anything like that

[wren08]

Ok. If it were one of the girls, I'd be in the emergency room asap because it isn't typical with them. I guessed since you weren't, you knew what you were doing.

Hope he feels better now!

[similarmistake]

Gosh, that sounds like what Adam goes through when he has a migraine... and his migraines started when he was a child, too. Poor thing. I hope he feels better today.

And happy belated birthday!

[moderately_mad]

Thanks for both the birthday wish and the info about Adam's experiences. If it's not too personal, may I ask how often he gets them now? And how old was he when he started? Is he, by any chance, "gifted"?

[adaptor]

I'm glad to hear you had a nice birthday at least!

[moderately_mad]

Hey you! I haven't noticed you around much lately ... though to be fair, I haven't been very good about reading my flist. You were sorta missing for a while there weren't you? I'm gonna wander over to your place to catch up once I answer all these comments and score a few days that I've skipped.

[moderately_mad]

Okay. Now I feel really bad. I forgot to add you to my "new" filter. (By new, I mean more than a couple of months old.) No wonder you seemed to disappear. My bad.

And you've got seriously exciting stuff going on too. I'll try to catch up a bit over the next few days.

[woggie]

Two questions about paragraph 6:
Tharn?

and

third sentence after the semi-colon, "ho told you so"? See, you're telling me things about your personal life I never thought you'd confess to (teasing). :)

[spade0014]

"Tharn" is a word my mother uses to describe a "deer in the headlights" sort of reaction to a situation, where one just shuts down and seems unable to function properly for a time. I believe she first saw it in a Stephen King novel, and since then she has adapted it nicely to her own interesting vocabulary. She may be able to tell you more about this "tharn" thing, but that's the basic idea of it.

[woggie]

Thanks. :)

How's the head? Was it an actual migraine?

[moderately_mad]

This one is from my daughter. Though Ch-- could probably speak this well, he would be unlikely to type so much at a time. That's one of our projects for the summer -- teaching him to type so that he can actually express some of his thoughts without having to do the torturous handwriting thing. I'm going to set him up with an lj too ... strictly filtered of course. (You're one of the folks I was planning to ask to friend him. I haven't figured out how to work that yet, because I certainly don't want anyone to have to filter their thoughts.)

As far as we'll ever know, yes it was a migraine. (As evidenced by his near coma following the mid-night events and his chipper mood this morning. He's a different kid when it happens.)