I’m Thankful for the Migraine

This morning I woke up with a migraine.  Now, that’s nothing new.  It actually happens once every few weeks or so during my best months.  At six in the morning, my day is already full force.  The first hour is usually the hardest with clothes to lay out, breakfast to cook, and two toddlers who already act like teenagers whining to stay in bed.  It sucks to have to go through all that with a migraine and there’s nobody to give me a sick day.  That said though, I’m happy all I have to deal with is a migraine.

Migraine Monster is pecking at my brain.

I can pop some Tylenol, bitch a lot, and sit in a dark room avoiding the kids while they play with Legos.  I know that eventually the pounding in my head and feeling that my eyes are trying to escape from their sockets is going to be gone.  Not everyone is so lucky.  If you look around the blogging world, it’s full of people who go through pain, limitations, or just general difficulty stemming from an ailment every day.

One of my closest friends is in a wheelchair.  Jenn is still fan-freaking-tabulous and as she puts it, “rocks harder than she rolls“.  She and her husband are still TTC.  Even though she’s experiencing the deterioration that comes with Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy, she still gets up and puts on her big girl panties every morning to work and keep their home (She’s an awesome designer who did this whole site for me).  I don’t have half as much drive as she does.  She’s as sarcastic as me and can deal with me making inappropriate S&M jokes about me leashing minions to her wheelchair. . . and making horrible edits to her blog’s avatar in Microsoft Paint. . . I love you Jenn; don’t beat me.  (In all seriousness, MW should block my access to any kind of photo editing.)

I love her to pieces.

There’s a blogger local to me who suffers from Fibromyalgia.  That means episodes of hell-all-over-the-body.  Elizabeth works and raises  two kids alone with the constant threat of swelling, soreness, losing speech and sight, and just general pain.  How would you deal with that always looming over you?  On top of that, she’s still involved with her church and is a very devout woman.  When you talk to her, you’d never know anything was wrong because she’s so pleasant to talk to and just a generally jovial woman.  That extends to her children too who always seem to be smiling and enjoying life with Mom.

Over at Raising Extra Special Kids, I’ve watched as Amanda helps raise awareness for childhood diseases because while she’s okay, her family’s three blessing have all come to them with disorders.  Their oldest is Autistic and Epileptic, the middle little guy has a speech delay, and the youngest is in physical therapy for his legs.  Not only does she still raise them (without a nanny), she is constantly coming up with sensory activities to help the oldest.  She’s even involved in running a faith-based, family-owned company that makes weighted quilts for kids with issues like Autism.

My point is that it’s easy to want to stay in bed all morning when things suck, but if people who deal with daily challenges can still get up and handle it, I need to flip the Migraine Monster the bird and keep moving too.  Sometimes you just need to see another person’s life to put your own problems into perspective.