Silent Treatment

The first thing I noticed was the throbbing. This whah-whah-whah sound, kind of like the inside of an MRI, but faster. And above it, a high-pitched not-quite-ringing, more like a frequency that I can hear, way up high, above the throbbing. Worst when I wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning. I am ignoring it, and then I realize that I am ignoring it - like the ignoring was instinctive rather than conscious. Is it high blood pressure? An inner ear issue?

It gets worse with each passing day. Till I am having trouble hearing over it. Having trouble concentrating and thinking, which is a problem because I think about complicated stuff for a living. A friend at work tells me he thinks I need a few days off. The dark circles under my eyes are genuinely frightening to others.

Finally I google "head throbbing" and the google overlords offer me "head throbbing without pain." Yes - that is exactly what is happening. And bam, I learn a new phrase: silent migraine.

So, turns out migraines have four stages, and "aura" is the second stage, after "prodrome" and before "pain." From Web MD:

In the past, experts thought migraines were primarily a problem with blood flow in the brain. That is they thought of them as "vascular" events. They now believe aura is a "neurovascular" event. That means it involves the way nerve cells are firing in the brain and how nerve cell activity relates to the brain's blood flow. Aura appears to be a case of overstimulation and then depression of nerve cell activity in the brain.

Overstimulation and then depression - well, that's my past three weeks in a nutshell. And you know what is totally crazy? I'm actually sitting here feeling guilty for blogging about myself instead of my kid. And I had to take a break in writing this to once again change the settings on her cell phone to add more blocks. Is it any wonder I'm developing poorly understood mental maladies?

So I page over to the Child Trauma Academy and check out the materials on caregiver stress. And here's what surprises me:  I get angry. Not just a little angry but really freaking angry. Here's a five column chart of all the stuff I am supposed to be doing to take care of myself, right next to a paragraph suggesting that I ask myself if I'm doing the best I can. Please tell me how I am supposed to relax in the assurance that I am doing the best I can when I am looking at twenty-odd additional things I am supposed to be doing. Who comes up with this stuff?

Whah-whah-whah... the throbbing is getting louder.

"Maintaining a positive view of the world is also important.  When working with clients who have experienced trauma, it may become easy to believe that the world is falling apart or that people are going mad.  Remember that, although bad things happen and people are affected, there is a lot of good that goes on as well.  Work to look for the good in people and situations.  Remember the good you are doing."

Seriously, dude. F*!? you.

Experts: stop telling us that the answer is for us to do more.

And in all this noise the answer comes to me, and it's right there in the name of the illness itself. 

Silence. 

Silence of the monkey mind and the fatigued heart. Just let me turn it off, just for a moment. 

I close my eyes. I breathe. I survive. The throbbing subsides. For a little while.