Week-Long Headache

Last Monday night, I developed a nasty headache. A sense of nausea came along with it — it felt like motion-sickness in my head, not like food-poisioning in my stomach. I went to bed, hoping to sleep it off.

But it didn’t go away Tuesday or Wednesday, even though I stayed home and rested. So Wednesday I went to one of those drop-in medical clinics. The doctor wasn't exactly sure what's going on. Her best guess was that it might be my first migraine. (Apparently only some migraine-suffers are sensitive to light and sound, which I didn’t know. Specific migraine symptoms are supposedly rather individual.)

But it might something else. Helpful, those doctors are. :( (As if humans are complex or something! Psh!) She said there's a stomach flu going around that does have headache and nausea as symptoms, but my stomach feels and sounds fine. (As I said above, the nausea feels located in my head, not my stomach.) She said it could be low thyroid. She said it could be related to my other weird neurological thing. They took some blood samples (botching up my elbow all bruisy while they were at it) to rule out non-migraine causes. Update, 4 PM: The blood work all came back normal. So "migraine" remains the most likely diagnosis.

The doctor prescribed some Vicodin for the pain, which I took on Thursday. Unfortunately, it makes the nausea worse. I'd rather have a headache than worse nausea, so I stopped taking them.

Now that I've had this headache and nausea for a week, I've noticed patterns. The headache is worse in the morning, right after waking up. The nausea seems motion-sensitive: I inevitably feel sick in a car, and just walking or pacing can bring it on, too. Update, 4 PM: Rapidly scrolling text also triggers it. Awesome! Sitting still makes the nausea go away and lets the headache recede to mostly-ignorable levels. If I sit still long enough, I feel pretty much normal. So I've found coping strategies. But it really should just go away, dammit! :(