In which the Rodent learns from past mistakes.

Having spent another restless night listening to the wind (and even, at one point, nipping out for a 3am walk to see how bad the wind was), I learned that Tramadol is not really any good to me as a nightcap. Today I took it early. Not terribly early, since I slept through until my flute teacher rang me at some point past 3pm. I may have needed it, today was much better.

I went Outside! I went to the butchers and had returned, unpacked veg and cooked us both breakfast before much more than an hour had passed since waking. This is very quick off the mark for me, but it did put me on edge for the rest of the day: one reason I like two hours to get off the mark from sleep to Out.

Then the second trip was to the garage, pausing only to admire a double part-rainbow, a complete rainbow and a pretty sunset. There I got enough gas for a goodly while and various sundries. I am having fewer episodes where I forget what I was doing and miss chunks of time, which is nice. I was able to stay focused on what I was doing right through all the processes of getting to the garage, getting money, looking around at things and then paying. I did nearly walk off without the gas, but that's fairly normal.

I'm not sure how to explain the difference between normal absent-mindedness and the strange, frightening voids in memory that bother me. I think it's the difference between forgetting to pick up the gas and forgetting what a gas card is and not being able to work out what to do with it, or where I currently am, and why.


A second meal was cooked and eaten: thinly sliced leeks cut on the bias and cooked in butter, white wine and nutmeg, to which grated carrots and then dried tarragon were added. With this, Ruthi had my last vealburger (I made it from high-welfare veal) and I had big, fat venison sausages from the local butcher. We both had sweet potatoes cooked with allspice and sage, pronounced very delicious by Ruthi.
Dessert was underripe pear and overripe red plum cooked in red wine, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and fresh ginger. Ruthi had seconds, so I think she liked it.

Since I've put laundry on, remembered to give Moth her hot water bottle and done the bulk of the washing up, as well as my ten chores, I'd say today was a very high functioning day. It remains to be seen how well tomorrow goes, but hopefully an early night will get me awake in better time to go museum-visiting.

Pain is only about four, bothersome but I can still feel good, spiking to six, ow, or seven where life seems unfun and I have to stop typing.

In which the Rodent lives the life better stoned.

The first day of Tramadol did not go well, because I slept badly and then got woken up several times an hour and a half apart each time by poor well-meaning Pol. This left me wiped out on Sunday. I got poor-quality sleep in the afternoon and of course stayed awake all night. Then I had to get up to host Ruthi (a person of much, much shininess). My first painkiller of the day was HFCC again, but, on being reminded I have Tramadol as an option, I took one tonight.

The headache's still there but I can think clearly through it and the pain is somehow ignorable. I have no idea why opiates help me the way they do. They clearly do help, but crivvens if I can see why. I'm not addicted to them and every doctor going says they don't help alleviated migraine symptoms, so why do they leave me able to follow thoughts in a straight line?

To give an example, just now before finally dropping off, I've finished the process of getting back on MSN and Skype and I've uploaded my preferred icon, which will end up here when I find out how to do things with pictures. Part of the uploading involved installing an image converter and using it to convert a gif to a bmp. I kept getting it wrong, which is the sort of thing which makes my migraines spike massively, normally. Trying to problem solve and stay on-task like that is very, very hard with a migraine. Just now I have a humdinger but I've still done all that and even remembered to blog before I go to sleep.

The five months of unremitting pain have left me without any fear of the worst migraines can throw at me painwise, so in a good world I won't get into a despair spiral when the headache gets sore. Tramadol being a very effective painkiller, I think I'll notice the pain more when it wears off, an effect I'd seen already with cocodamol. I was convinced that Tramadol had helped me think more clearly back in late 2006/early 2007, during which time I learned a good chunk of Spanish, moved to Seville for several months, found a good (very good) hostel as a temporary measure (Hostel Oasis in Seville is a very, very good place), rented a flat and dealt with flights back to the UK (although I did need help with booking a train). I wasn't happy, and I was too unreliable to be fit to work, but I was functional. Unhappy, in pain but still feeling like a person.

Contrast to my time without, which was spent more or less doing nothing. Forgive the self-pitying tone here, but it was a crappy second half to the year. My social life dwindled because I couldn't stand to see anyone and, worse, can't remember from one conversation to the next what has been discussed. Trying to concentrate to remember is a migraine spike, usually. Not right now, when drugged on Tramadol, but usually. My old skills all fell away and I lost the ability to learn new things. I tried to plan a Solstice meal and couldn't, until I started back on cocodamol.

Magical opiates allow me to think, reason, remember and plan. I can without, but such cognitive efforts are always fragmentary and disordered. I lose the thread of what I am trying to do and the inevitable frustration that engenders causes a small vicious circle of pain until I drop what I was trying to do and go back to lalala butterflies again.

It was a pity that the first day left me an insomniac wreck, but I'll see how it goes from here.
It's 2am, later than I planned on sleeping, but it's still within my definition of 'night' since I am generally a 3am-11am sleeper when healthy. I think I can drop off and even if I don't, there are strict instructions left to let me sleep it out tomorrow so I can get my head straight. Pain is base five, spiking eight.