Mighty Cheese

The morning opening presents was great. Being with Nell, the boys, and their cousins was all fun. Taking the three youngest to Charlotte's Web and handling them for lunch was easy. We met up with Nell's brother Ted and his family. Again, all without stress. Then we were meant to go to friends' for dinner, with all of the above family and two other families (and their kids). That seemed like too high stress. I took half a dose of Vicodin and I was fine. Never felt stoned, never had the feeling of a headache coming. No problem sleeping.

The annual dinner for our little investment club was tonight. I spent the day fielding questions about my parents' loft and helping my business partner deal with the memo we needed to send the contractor. I took half a dose of Vicodin before going to the dinner at 7pm. It lasted until 11pm. I never felt stoned or loopy at the dinner, but once I lay down to go to sleep I felt drifty, the room spun a little, and I had trouble sleeping. (The opiate does that. I go into a nodding state of dreaming often, but not really sleeping.)

The boys had a bit of a busy weekend planned. 

We dropped Dexter for a movie and dinner with H. Rudy was dropped for a birthday dinner with a different H. Nell and I went to the promenade and tried on jeans and the fluorescent lighting and unhelpful staff in the places we went into started to give me a little headache. We picked Rudy up and went to our friends' the B's for dinner and desserts. While there I started to feel worse. 

There were a few guests that seemed extraordinary. A woman with way too much money complained about how horrible it was that terrorists would target the beauty of cities like Los Angeles and New York. She seemed beyond belief, not a real character. Then the big muscle guy arrived with his little white poodle. I was trying to track everyone. It was impossible. The kids were shrieking. At about 8:15 I knew I had to leave. At 8:30 I told Nell I had to walk home, leaving her and Rudy there. 

The walk was nice. It was dark, cool, and a little damp. I lost sense of time. As soon as I was home I took two Vicodin. They took over an hour to take effect because of the amount of food in my belly. I lay on the bed while Nell came home, made a phone call, got Rudy into bed and so forth. Finally, at about 10:00 the Vicodin took effect and I watched a little of The Hulk with Rudy before he went to sleep.

I slept fitfully, in bits and pieces, waking constantly until 2:45am. Then I was only up every fifteen minutes until 5:45am when I feel completely asleep.

In the morning I felt awful. Particularly wiped out and hollow. I cancelled any thought of going flying.

We had the LaZebniks, Dellaversons, and Raimis over for pre-trick-r-treat. It was great. Then the food was delayed, two people came along as guests of the guests, Dexter had an unannounced play date which lasted until we had guests arriving...

I felt my blood pressure rising. So I took half a dose of Vicodin, which is my new plan. I tried Advil once, and that didn't work (there's no pain for it to block). I have a feeling that blood pressure medication would also help, and that Valium (or whatever the modern equivalent is) would work too.

I feel like I almost have enough data to show a doctor. I believe I take two Vicodin a month on average.

It was a long day. There was a play date for Rudy and Haskell in the morning, lunch with Justin Lazard (an old, troubled friend), and dinner with the LaZebniks and Mel & Lilla in the evening (starting in the late afternoon). After fielding some scheduling issues (Nell running out just as her father arrived, Dexter not wanting to play even though Annie was there, Rudy wanting to read instead of engaging with Johnny), I went to get the ribs with Mel. 

On my return, even after a relaxing walk to the store for beverages, I could tell that it was a headache event, so I took half a Vicodin. I didn't get sweaty, nauseous, or stoned feeling. I didn't get even a hint of a headache. It is 10pm and I feel a little more sleepy than usual.

Nell read in the NY Times that the latest study showed the management of migraines with a dose of something (Vicodin, Valium) before the onset meant for a much better overall experience. I have noticed this myself, but it makes me feel like a drug addict, because I am taking an opiate before I have any real pain.

Nell's sister was having a big party (two hundred people) to celebrate the publication of her second novel. We got baby sitting and went. There would be a ton of people there who I sort of knew, but knew that I would have trouble remember the names of or talking to. 

I did remarkably well and it was only two hours into it that I started to feel a migraine start to sneak up. I went to the bathroom, took a Vicodin and was fine for the rest of the night.

Returning from the Lake in Canada is an olympic event. I am responsible for both boys, there is a tight schedule, and I'm going through airport security and customs. 

There was horrible traffic coming into Toronto on Monday night. We had a reservation at the revolving restaurant, and it took us so long to get to the hotel that I was worried we would miss the dinner time. The boys were great, but I seemed to have lost my long pants. I had to get them both bathed, and they were a little dazed from the car ride down. Traffic into downtown Toronto was terrible, apparently I had coincided with the global AIDS conference. Excellent. We parked and wandered the base of the CN Tower in fog trying to find the way up. Dinner was magnificent.

We returned to the hotel and the boys went to sleep after a movie. I was up most of the night thinking about the things I needed to do on my return and how I was going to get home. What I needed to bring to the airport for the boys and what they were going to be doing on the flight home. I could feel the migraine at the base of my skull, but I willed it away. I couldn't have one and take care of the boys, so I decided I would just relax and focus and not have it until I was on the airplane.

The next morning it was a bums rush to the airport with a poor breakfast in a pastry shop next to the hotel. Canada, the can't do country. 

We made it there, returned the car, stood in line, got boarding passes, stood in line, ignored the fascists, stood in line... Learned that we could not bring bottles of water onto the plane. Stood in line. I felt the migraine coming like a train down the line from the next town. I took a Vicodin so that it would not stop at this town. We boarded the plane. I had a bad ten minutes of sweating and nausea, which seemed to be from the Vicodin, and then I was fine (but a little stoned) for the rest of the trip.

Not sure. Gary Stockdale mentions in email on the following day "I hope you got rid of your migraine." If it was bad enough to mention to him them it was bad enough that I probably took something for it, most likely a Vicodin.