Living With Migraine, IS Work!

I am not able to do much during a migraine storm. The storm hits like a hurricane and then I'm blown off my feet. If I am lucky, the eye of the storm my pass over me. If it does, I am not usually able to do much when I'm temporarily sitting in the eye of the storm. I know that it is just a brief respite and that the winds of change have to hit me on the other side. Like a real storm, the calm that comes after, leaves a lot of debris in it's wake and my life has to be put back together again.The hard part, and what our non-invisible illness friends and family don't seem to understand, is that our bodies, as machines, are not meant or able to go from 0 to 60 in NO seconds flat. Even though I am feeling better, I just can't jump up, proclaim myself 100% ready to go and hit the floor running. It just doesn't work that way.

There is always, what I have referred to over the last 20 years, as a migraine hangover. A time when all I can do is try to sit and relax. To catch up with my 'life'. It is inevitable that it may take me a couple of days to recuperate and get back into the swing of things.

This is hard work, people! I don't have a 'real' job at this point in time, because my invisible illness has forced me to take disability. But that doesn't mean that I am not working hard.

Every day, it is work to lift myself from the bed. It is work to do morning hygiene routines and work to fix a breakfast, as simple as it may seem to others. Finding energy to clean house, do yard work, finish basement construction, wash and maintain the cars, pressure wash and stain the front and back decks, change heat pump filters, work on the lawn mower, change light bulbs, do laundry, go grocery shopping, picking  my daughter up from school, as well as a myriad of additional chores, becomes very difficult tasks indeed. This is work.

Being a domestic engineer is as hard, while contending with my migraines, as the regular 8 to 5 job I had as an Information Technology Director for a large School of Architecture. The pay (let's say) is very different, but I must take pride in working against the storm, and getting done, what I can. Living with migraine or invisible illness is work. It is hard work, and others should be thankful they are not forced to work in my shoes.

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