experiment day 4, Nov 5
Nov. 10th, 2006 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleSomething unpleasant happened Sunday. It was not a disaster. I credit Lyrica with it not being a disaster. Usually, I do not mix well with strobe lights.
I started taking Lyrica Nov. 2. I am taking the smallest dose I can, considering the size of the capsules. I am sleeping more than usual, and it's hard to get up in the morning, but I can cope. There is not a noticable change in how anxious and depressed I am. That's pretty bad, but not a new thing.
Nov. 5 was a Sunday. I took the little girls to the Museum of Science. I drove, because with 3 hours between end-of-naptime and close-of-museum, I didn't want to spend nearly 2 hours each way on transit. And I've driven there before. It's only about half an hour to drive there. Traffic should be light. Weather will be clear. There will be daylight. I had good directions. It should not be so very difficult. But then Memorial Drive was closed, and there was construction, and I had to go around, and I got lost in the detours, and I was driving around trying to figure out where we were. The big kid was asking, "But aren't we going to the museum today?" The little kid was crying, and I wanted to cry, myself. It took about an hour of confused driving around, but we finally found the place.
We had a good time at the museum with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
callunav and juliansinger. I noticed that the Discovery Center, the room for little kids, has flickery fluorescent lights. It also has a disco ball. Under ordinary circumstances, I don't just "notice" this sort of thing, the way a person might notice quiet background music. I notice it the way most people notice a fire alarm is going off. Sunday, I was a little uncomfortable, but I could play in the Discovery Center with the kids for 10 minutes or so before my headache became a problem, and even then it wasn't catastrophic. It wasn't that bad of a problem, we could just go to another part of the museum that didn't flicker.
After the museum closed, I put the kids in their carseats and headed out of the museum parking garage. Then I realized. NOVEMBER. It was really dark, nothing at all like 6pm had been in October. Flickering lights are worse against a darker background. And my directions home depended on Memorial Drive, which was closed. And the little one was coughing and wheezing and generally making distressing noises. (When I learned first aid, they taught me that a person who could cough was getting air...but a croupy cough still *sounds* scary.) I made a wrong turn in search of Storrow Drive, and wound up going in a direction even *I* could tell was completely wrong.
After a few miles, I turned off the main road into a residential neighborhood, in search of a place to turn around. Or maybe a sign saying "Storrow Drive West," with an arrow. Or maybe even someone I could ask directions of... The residential neighborhood I picked had no useful signs at all, and only narrow 1-way streets, so it was difficult to turn around. I finally found a local person taking groceries out of her car, and asked her to direct me to Storrow. A police car pulled up behind us, strobe light flashing, objecting to my being there. It was confusing. If the policeman had wanted to get by, I would have pulled over in the only space available - in front of a fire hydrant. But he was only there to yell at me, and I think moving to block the fire hydrant would have made it worse. He yelled at me for 5 minutes by the clock. (Just counting the time I was out of the car.) He was using the really nasty kind of strobe, and I did not dare ask him to turn it off. Telling someone in authority that I can't handle strobes feels too much like an invitation to take away my driving license.
With that much strobe exposure, I was expecting a very bad reaction. Maybe so many timeslips they run together. Maybe such a bad migraine flare I couldn't see. But this time, it really wasn't that bad. I only burst into tears as a tactical gesture, to show the policeman he had won, to make myself pathetic rather than threatening. I even got him to tell me where Storrow Drive was. I got in the car, and drove the girls home. I didn't pull over and pull myself together, and consider if the situation was bad enough that I should call their parents to come get us, because there was no legal place to pull over in that area. I said comforting things to the 6 year old, while I drove. She was worried about me getting a ticket, worried about anything that could make me cry. No absence seizures. None. No sudden savage migraine flare. 60-90 minutes later, I had a moderately painful migraine flare. It was unpleasant, but not overwhelming. Not disabling. In the grand scheme of things, I was fine. What does that mean? Is this a reliable effect of Lyrica, or just a bit of extraordinary good luck?
I started taking Lyrica Nov. 2. I am taking the smallest dose I can, considering the size of the capsules. I am sleeping more than usual, and it's hard to get up in the morning, but I can cope. There is not a noticable change in how anxious and depressed I am. That's pretty bad, but not a new thing.
Nov. 5 was a Sunday. I took the little girls to the Museum of Science. I drove, because with 3 hours between end-of-naptime and close-of-museum, I didn't want to spend nearly 2 hours each way on transit. And I've driven there before. It's only about half an hour to drive there. Traffic should be light. Weather will be clear. There will be daylight. I had good directions. It should not be so very difficult. But then Memorial Drive was closed, and there was construction, and I had to go around, and I got lost in the detours, and I was driving around trying to figure out where we were. The big kid was asking, "But aren't we going to the museum today?" The little kid was crying, and I wanted to cry, myself. It took about an hour of confused driving around, but we finally found the place.
We had a good time at the museum with
callunav and juliansinger. I noticed that the Discovery Center, the room for little kids, has flickery fluorescent lights. It also has a disco ball. Under ordinary circumstances, I don't just "notice" this sort of thing, the way a person might notice quiet background music. I notice it the way most people notice a fire alarm is going off. Sunday, I was a little uncomfortable, but I could play in the Discovery Center with the kids for 10 minutes or so before my headache became a problem, and even then it wasn't catastrophic. It wasn't that bad of a problem, we could just go to another part of the museum that didn't flicker.After the museum closed, I put the kids in their carseats and headed out of the museum parking garage. Then I realized. NOVEMBER. It was really dark, nothing at all like 6pm had been in October. Flickering lights are worse against a darker background. And my directions home depended on Memorial Drive, which was closed. And the little one was coughing and wheezing and generally making distressing noises. (When I learned first aid, they taught me that a person who could cough was getting air...but a croupy cough still *sounds* scary.) I made a wrong turn in search of Storrow Drive, and wound up going in a direction even *I* could tell was completely wrong.
After a few miles, I turned off the main road into a residential neighborhood, in search of a place to turn around. Or maybe a sign saying "Storrow Drive West," with an arrow. Or maybe even someone I could ask directions of... The residential neighborhood I picked had no useful signs at all, and only narrow 1-way streets, so it was difficult to turn around. I finally found a local person taking groceries out of her car, and asked her to direct me to Storrow. A police car pulled up behind us, strobe light flashing, objecting to my being there. It was confusing. If the policeman had wanted to get by, I would have pulled over in the only space available - in front of a fire hydrant. But he was only there to yell at me, and I think moving to block the fire hydrant would have made it worse. He yelled at me for 5 minutes by the clock. (Just counting the time I was out of the car.) He was using the really nasty kind of strobe, and I did not dare ask him to turn it off. Telling someone in authority that I can't handle strobes feels too much like an invitation to take away my driving license.
With that much strobe exposure, I was expecting a very bad reaction. Maybe so many timeslips they run together. Maybe such a bad migraine flare I couldn't see. But this time, it really wasn't that bad. I only burst into tears as a tactical gesture, to show the policeman he had won, to make myself pathetic rather than threatening. I even got him to tell me where Storrow Drive was. I got in the car, and drove the girls home. I didn't pull over and pull myself together, and consider if the situation was bad enough that I should call their parents to come get us, because there was no legal place to pull over in that area. I said comforting things to the 6 year old, while I drove. She was worried about me getting a ticket, worried about anything that could make me cry. No absence seizures. None. No sudden savage migraine flare. 60-90 minutes later, I had a moderately painful migraine flare. It was unpleasant, but not overwhelming. Not disabling. In the grand scheme of things, I was fine. What does that mean? Is this a reliable effect of Lyrica, or just a bit of extraordinary good luck?
