Let slip the electic worms

I was a little slow Sunday morning, and eventually slapped myself awake with a coffee and breakfast. After much enjoyable chat and some business with Adelle, I readied myself for APS cricket for my employer, the ABS.

We had Treasury suppressed and the wickets flowing gently in the first session. We went to drinks at 4/68. Afterward their captain started exploding, and the runs began to flow. Fours and sixes aplenty, then he retired at 50 exactly as per the rules of A.P.S. cricket, but the others did not slouch, and they were eventually all out for 190. A difficult, but not impossible task, as we had gotten more than this earlier in the year.

My tale went off the wires about six overs before the end- with a visual aura. What is a visual aura? I'm glad you asked. It's one of the signs of the upcoming pain apocalypse known as a migraine.

Stage one. Vague feeling of wrongness. I was in slips and had a vague sense that something was wrong. I cleaned my glasses, and stretched out a bit, and moved my muscles about, but the vague sense of wrongness was there.

Next over, came 'the blobs' It's like someone has gotten a little blob of Vaseline and smeared it on the lenses of my glasses. I can still see through these blobs, but they are right in the middle of my vision. Uh-oh spaghetti-oh. This is where what is happening clicks in.

I'm in slips. This means that, under a standard circumstance, a very hard cricket ball could be flying straight for me. Not only should I catch it for the sake of the team, I should also be ready and able to catch it for the sake of not injuring myself.

This becomes increasingly unlikely as the 'auras' get worse. They get larger, and more blocking of my central vision, and more 'grey scaled', going from Vaseline clear to sewing machine oil light grey.

I talk to the captain, and request getting the hell out of slips. He puts me in covers/ square leg, much safer. It has the quarter second more time to adjust if needs be if the ball comes to me.

One more over, and the blobs clear, and I get 'the electric worms'. These little things are like 5mm 'strings' that are bursting with rings of electric, unnatural colours. The colours on these little worms are deeply strange, and their colours do not occur in nature - too vivid, too electrical. The worms are actually an improvement on the aura's - they do not occur over the central eye, so are not as dangerous during a cricket match.

However, the next stage will be the pain. We come off the field, and I ask Mike, our Captain, if I may open the batting. I'm on a race - soon, I will be hit with the pain, and likely unable to return. Mike agrees.

The drinks for sale esky was there, so I inhaled a coke, and then dropped two sunkist orange drinks in about three minutes. I'm not sure if it was the caffine in the coke, the icy coldness of the softdrinks, or the sugar, or what, but the visual auras cleared.

That meant, the pain was next.

We went out to the centre. My partner knew what was going on, and he was fretting, and called out the opponents to get onto the field. I was embarrassed but thankful. It's not their problem if I have a migraine coming...

I knew I was there for a good time, not a long time. I belted the first ball to the boundary with a perfect late drive through gulley. I wasn't sure if it would make the boundary, so I ran a couple of runs... woah. Hello Mr thump.

I could see. I was upright, but each heartbeat had a little friend with a bellows blowing pain through the upper right quadrant of my brain. Special. It was the thumpy fullness pain, not the sharp 'hammer' pain. Tolerable. I played and missed at the balls outside for the rest of the over, and blocked the two on the sticks.

Next over my partner had an over of playing and missing or blocking, which I appreciated.

Next over it was back to business. Poor bowler had me clipping things away with my bat close enough that leb byes were not called for my next few runs. I was too tired to check up on the umpire, as each time I was running and my head was pounding.

Next over I faced the other opener, and smacked a beautiful four. I hit it wonderfully cleanly. It went straight through the legs of the fielder on the cover drive - he tried to get down to it, but couldn't do so fast enough. That balls was TRAVELLING.

I next tried to drive again, and got some luck, french cutting for two more. Meh. By this time the thumping was pretty industrial, and things were getting fuzzy.

I ran a few more runs, but the initial opening bowler shot one through the gate between bat and pad. Poor form came to play once the energy ran out and the thumping got too much.

I had a nice little 14, and drove straight home. I stripped off straight away, and got myself two Panadine, two Ibuprofen and a cold shower. Cold water straight on the skull really helps, and having no hair to hold the heat helps even more. I was hoping to grow out my hair - but even the 3mm holds so much heat in that situation. It's going to go back to blade none next time Nick and I are both at home.

The straight cold shower staved off the pain, and I made a call to Adelle explaining what had gone down, and requesting that we could skip our 'before we sleep' phone call, explaining that this was it :) She had experience with another person with migraines, so she knew the deal.

Within a few minutes, I had put my room in blackout, and gotten a black cloth to wrap my eyes around 17.00

21.00 saw crisis averted. Either a) the migraine did not go to the next, brutal steps, or b) it had done so while I was not awake to feel it. I came too, and my body was whinging that it was hungry. I crawled of bed and went and fixed some food.

After a nice chat & call with Adelle, I cleared an email or two, and even read a few pages of my book till crashing around 23.00

Today I made it to work okay, and took 44 calls. My only symptom has been my nose running like a tap, essentially running all the liquid in my body through my nose. Still, better that than a migraine!

Background: I used to get migraines weekly as a teenager, which is indescribable hell. Attending school four days a week and doing catchup pretty much every week and being in minor pain for a small period each day made study, social continuity, and sport more complicated than it needed to have been. Eventually the barrage of tests turned up a couple of useful things. I'm allergic to dust mites and cockroaches. Interesting aside. But the killer - photophobia. Allergic to sunlight. FFS. There is no cure, only avoidance. Great.


Extra: I went through this article after having read it to add in some wikipedia links - and have been finding cool stuff just by surfing wikipedia. Hooray undirected research uncovering interesting stuff :)