Sick last night, Sick the night before...

Many moons ago when I was in college, we had a drinking song that we used to sing on occasion. The lyrics were as follows:

Drunk last night, drunk the night before,
Gonna get drunk like we've never done before,
'Cause when I'm drunk, I'm as happy as can be,
'Cause I'm a member of the Scott family.
Oh, Scott family is the best family.
The best family in all of Germany.

From the highland Dutch to the lowland Dutch,
From the Rotterdam Dutch, to the goddam Dutch,
Glorious, glorious, a whole keg of beer for the four of us,
Glad there aren't any more of us, 'cause one could drink the whole thing.
Damn near!
My eyes are dim (are dim)!
I cannot see (can't see)!

Then, i don't really remember the rest of the lyrics. I'm not sure anyone knew them. All of our drinking songs had been handed down over the decades, one class to the next.

Anyway, for some reason, every time someone asks me how I'm feeling, I just keep thinking of this song, except in my mind I'm hearing, "Sick last night, sick the night before..."

This morning sickness is really taking its toll on me. I am miserable. And not too happy about it all. The only thing that seems to be soothing my stomach is Coca-Cola on crushed ice. I get sick if I'm hungry. Sick if I eat too much or the wrong thing. Breakfast is the worst, but I can get sick any time of day really. I've definitely thrown up more the last three weeks than I have in the last three years.

And speaking of throwing up, I think I need to go now.

A Terrifying Pregnancy Side-Effect

Since I was twelve, I have suffered from migraine headaches. My mom had them, too. And my grandmother. I remember how debilitatingly painful they were. They usually started in the afternoon and by nightfall, I would be moaning in agony, clutching my throbbing head and running down the hall to throw up in the bathroom. I remember my grandmother applying camphor compresses to my head, turning off all the lights, and sitting with me in my darkened room. Eventually, my mom took me to the doctor and he diagnosed me as having migraines and prescribed Midrin, a pain reliever which provided great relief and sleep, blessed sleep.

I had migraines off and on throughout junior high and high school and once or twice in college. As a young adult, they picked up again once I had a series of stressful jobs that didn't pay nearly enough. In 1999, they picked up again. I was planning my wedding and had just been promoted to Director of Marketing for a high-tech firm. My neurologist wrote me a prescription for Imitrex and wrote the headaches off to stress. A month or two after my wedding, I went off the Pill and hadn't had another migraine until last night.

This one was a doozy. It started with the classic migraine aura symptoms. I had spotty, fragmented vision and felt a little disoriented. It started while I was cooking dinner, including our favorite Robert Redford dessert. Scott came home, I sat and chatted with him while supper cooked, then I returned to finish up supper, feeling a lot better. Within about 30 minutes, I began to feel totally disoriented and confused. I was trying to write a note to a friend and realized the words I was writing were not the words I was thinking. I tried to speak and I couldn't make my tongue do what I wanted it to. I realized I was experiencing a form of aphasia and I began to freak out. I managed to tell Brendan's little friend Haley to go home and went back upstairs to get Scott. I didn't want to freak him out, but I was terrified. I thought I was having a stroke.

I managed to get the words out, very slowly and painfully, to tell Scott I thought I was having a stroke. He then took me through the tests to see if I was having a stroke: lift both arms above the head, smile, repeat a specific sentence. I didn't have any trouble with any of those, so we ruled out stroke pretty quickly. I began to feel less confused, less disoriented, so we went downstairs and ate dinner. By the time we were finished eating, the headache had started and I was pretty incapacitated.

Scott did a great job taking care of me and Brendan and helped me get him to bed. Then, we relaxed and watched Prison Break and 24 and went to bed and cuddled, thankful I was alive and for the time being, not the victim of a stroke.