My Headaches

Long time readers (and my family)know I have had migraines pretty much all my adult life. Causes generally include stress and lack of sleep. They can range from mild to debilitating and one day to four.. No fun.

Some of the worst ones have the pain above one of my eyes.. generally my right eye. It makes it hard to focus on anything, like driving, reading, computers, etc. In a new development I woke up Saturday (yes, woke up) with a headache and pain at the base of my skull.

I thought maybe I slept wrong or something but it hasn't gone away. I spent Saturday, Sunday and am still today dealing with the pain in my neck as well as pain over my right eye (the neck pain is also on the right side).

So I finally looked it up. Hey guess what.. theres a nerve that goes from above my eyes to the base of my skull. The Occipital nerve. It's the cause of Occipital Neuralgia.

From the looks of it I have been dealing with it for years but only around my eyes and sometimes the back of my head (towards the top). Never this new pain in my neck. It says it is usually a result of some trauma. I can't think of a single thing that could be except possibly about 5 years ago when we got rear ended on the way to Mikey's therapy. It wasn't serious, but I had neck pain for the rest of the day. That's all though.

Before that, I couldn't tell you if my migraines had any focus like they do now. So it's kind of up in the air. All I know is, I don't like it. It's hard to do anything except lay around in the dark with heating pads and as you know, with kids, you can't do that for long. I bought some Icy Hot patches today and that is actually helping some with my neck. But I smell awful :(

So a trip to the Dr is probably gonna be in order. At least we got the FSA going this year!