No, I’m not going to GRL 2014

And it’s not because I don’t want to. Or because management’s changed, or I couldn’t get to the website in time or anything like that.

I wasn’t going to post about it, but I’m getting a trickle of questions and so I figured I may as well answer here.

I’ve been very slightly quieter on social media after a string of posts about my migraines. I know a lot of that has been shoved to the side because I’ve been posting quiz results and other things. Basically I stopped talking about it because I was tired of thinking about it and I figured everyone was probably tired of hearing about it. But it hasn’t gone away. I just stopped talking about it as much.

Around November the frequency and symptoms of my migraines increased. I think in the grand scheme of things, I’m lucky. I get double vision along with the pain but the pain isn’t such that I can’t bear light.

However, double vision does make it difficult to do much of anything, including drive. And when the migraine comes on like that, I can have that symptom for 2 weeks. I’ve missed some work, done some work from home, and had a torture chambers worth of tests including MRIs and spinal taps.

The truth is, no matter how fun it is to watch House and see his genius revelations that lead to instant cures, my new life of rapid-fire migraines has no real cure, only treatment for the symptoms.

For the past month and a half, I’ve been trying out new and exciting poisons to tame the migraines enough that I can function like a normal human being again. The last one made it so that getting up to walk to the kitchen was an exhausting event, gave me nose bleeds, and often I couldn’t feel my hands and feet. I didn’t post too much about this because I was miserable and I didn’t want pity, I still don’t. I’m just using this as an example of how badly some of this trial and error goes. That went on for two weeks.

You know things aren’t going well with your headache when trepanning sounds reasonable. Image, Hieronymus Bosch

The medicine I’m on now seems like it may work. I still have one more week of ratcheting up the dosage and once I’m at full dose, that’ll be where the rubber meets the road.

Right now, I just don’t feel like I can make plans for October. I’m closing in on month four of trying to deal with this and it’s trashed all of the plans that I had made. This is a long-term illness and I am just at the start of it. I don’t even feel good about making plans for next week, let alone over half a year from now.

I’d like to be optimistic and believe that by October I’ll have it all in hand. Honestly, I thought I’d have it together by December, then January. February is on its last day and maybe I’ve got it arranged, but the point is, I’m just not sure if it’s under control in the way it needs to be for an extended period.

I had to make this decision for myself. I had to be very honest because I know that if I signed up, I’d go, whether I was well enough to attend or not. And if I was really, really not, I would be so devastated. Even more so than making the decision. Trust me, it wasn’t an easy one to come to. I’ll miss everyone there and will probably be watching jealously on Facebook and Twitter to see what everyone’s getting up to.

I may do some events closer to home where I don’t have to commit to an entire week and the stress of planes, trains, and automobiles. I’ll keep everyone updated.