Shortly after my last birthday, I got a headache. Nothing unusual, I tend to get the odd headache (usually because of a little dehydration, too much/little caffeine, etc) or migraine.

But it became apparent that this wasn’t the usual headache – for one, it started to stretch into several days. Each day, I’d wake up and feel it there (mostly as a tightness, but sometimes sharp and sometimes throbbing), and it’d stay until I was sleeping at night.

Needless to say, this became rather distracting and also draining.

I put up with it a little longer than I probably ought to have because I waited until a time I could cut away from the office and visit the doctor’s.

Eventually, I was put at ease by the doctor’s diagnosis – there are a bunch of possible causes, ranging from infection (including swine flu – apparently a large number of folks who get it are just getting headaches) to cluster headaches. Of course, there were more serious options, but I figured the odds were for something more mundane.

The second doctor I saw prescribed some medication for migraines and headaches, which I took and then when I woke the next day, it was mostly gone. My head feels much better now, two days later, so it seems it was just cluster headaches.

So, that’s something else to look forward to, I guess – migraines and now cluster headaches…

Yesterday was just like any other day. I woke up, showered, got my bike out and headed for the train station. I stepped on the train, got my book out, and tried to read it on the way into the city.

I couldn’t manage it.

The letters were dancing around, and obscured by something flashes around the bottom edge of my vision.

That’s when I knew I was going to get a migraine. I figured I would be okay as long as I took some painkillers in time – which sometimes works.

Migraines are not just "bad headaches"

By the time I got to the office, the flashes had cleared (which was fortunate, as they really are disorientating). I managed to get some painkillers, but it was too late – the migraine hit, and there is nothing that’s going to stop it.

Migraines vary from person to person – I’m pretty lucky that I only get a handful each year, whereas my father gets them a lot more frequently. But when I do get them, they are awful. Besides the pain, I also get extremely nauseous (sometimes to the point of vomiting). For some reason, I don’t get the light sensitivity that a lot of other sufferers get.

About all I can do once the migraine is in full swing is to sleep – so I excused myself and returned home, where I ended up sleeping for five hours and spent the rest of the day in a post-migraine fog (for some reason, a bunch of pain like that takes a lot out of me).

All in all, it wasn’t the worst migraine I’ve ever suffered, but not a pleasant experience.

The weather’s warming up, the days are getting longer, and the skirts are getting shorter – all the really great things about spring are here again.

The only downside is the hayfever.

For all those people who are lucky enough to not suffer hayfever or any allergies at all, it might be difficult to put across exactly how miserable and irritating this defect of the immune system is.

When I was 19 or so, I got a scratchy throat and a very runny nose. It got to the point where I was using teatowels for handkerchiefs around the house (don’t worry, they were washed on high heat, and weren’t used for their original purpose again). Every year since, those same symptons return, sometimes with nice extras like itchy eyeballs.

This all lasts about 4 months or so – although the different environment of South Australia to the United Kingdom means that my pollen season has probably changed (for one thing, it’s started up more than a month earlier than I expected).

Last year the anti-histamines held out through the season… they seem to be doing the job this year, too.