I’d been hoping to finish the first draft of my third novel, Metal Blade, today. I’d had a great idea for the beefing up I wanted to do to really round the novel out, I had a plan in place, I was raring to go.

Then I woke up feeling a little rough around the edges, and took some ibuprofen. My pan still seemed doable, if slightly harder work with a mild headache. Then the visual disturbances began, the pain behind my left eye intensified, my temperature began going up and down like a yoyo on speed…all the usual signs, signs I have come to know and loathe, and I knew that today was going to be a write off.

No pun intended.

Plan A (with clear head) – complete beefing up, do some marketing stuff, begin first read through of completed draft. Perhaps reward myself with regular coffee breaks, build in some spare time to play my guitar, and look forward to a beer in the evening.

Plan B (with the migraine) – lie in a darkened room in pain and pray for the blissful reprieve of unconsciousness.

So, a completely wasted day. If you’ve ever had a migraine you have my sympathies, and I’m sure you can understand why my day turned into a completely fruitless, painful nightmare. If you’ve never had a migraine, I wish I could come even close to explaining one to you without sounding overly dramatic. It’s like a psychotic headache on steroids. With ‘roid rage. And it brings along its friends. In my case chills/fever (alternating with not set time period for each, to really keep me on my toes), nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light (any light, not even necessarily bright light, just anything less dark than pitch black) and, my personal favourite, dizziness.

So, what can you do when one of these b*stards decides to take up residence for the day? Well, you can ride it out, which is extremely painful, or you can take the meds. In my case something beginning with Z and ending in tripto-something or other. The meds do help, they genuinely do, they take the edge off, they let me get to blissful sleep (if I don’t take them I’m rolling around in agony, which isn’t conducive to nodding off), and seep is the only real cure for me.

The downside to the meds is that the following day I feel like a zombie with lead weights strapped to my arms and legs and a head full of cotton wool. Migraines are a 48 hour thing for me, a day of agony, then a day of fuzzy-headed recovery. Yay for me.

Am I going to let this stop me working, though? No way no how. I am finishing that novel tomorrow, woolly headed or not. Might just take me a little longer, that’s all.

Oh, one final thing, migraines can be avoided, kind of. There are certain triggers that set them off, usually slightly different for each migraine sufferer. Mine tend to be lack of sleep, excessive alcohol consumption (well, duh), too much chocolate, long-distance journeys (especially if driving), and stress. Or a combination of any of the above. Oh, and green vegetables (I am sticking with that story for as long as I can get away with it). Of course, sometimes triggers can’t be avoided. I’m pretty stressed out at the moment, which in turn makes me not sleep, which in turn makes me want to eat Reese’s Pieces and drink beer. So, completely unavoidable…

That being said, regular exercise does help stave off the dreaded M word, so maybe I just need to get off my fat backside and start running again. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll let you know.

No picture today, a selfie would probably scare people (I am already in the zombie stage) and I did consider taking a picture of my meds and cold eye compress thing, but my brain decided that taking the picture, then emailing it to my gmail account so I can get it on my laptop, then uploading it to the site…it all just sounded like too much for this poor brain. Especially as typing this blog entry took me almost an hour…Normal service should resume tomorrow.

Stay Frosty, People…and if you are, can someone bring their frosty hands round and lay them on my forehead for a while? Please?