100 Things | Spoons

10. I don't have enough spoons more often then not because I suffer from migraines.

I know that isn't a shock to anyone that reads my blogs. I sometimes get very frustrated living this way - with pain. I am constantly counting spoons. I had never heard of the story used to describe how people that live with pain deal with daily life until a good friend of mine who also is a migraine sufferer pointed the story out to me. And it really does capture the daily ins-and-outs of living with pain.


I usually don't go a week without a migraine. And at times they are cycles where they last from 3 to 10 days. Every thing and every day with a migraine is measured. I wake up and gauge the level of pain...such as today is a 4...okay I might get away with graphic work or medium level of housework. If today was a 9 I wouldn't be able to get out of bed. And I would need everything quiet and black. Here is a good pain scale. Michael and I often use it when I have a migraine he will ask me what number I am at. Because I know it was very confusing for him when we were first together because some days I have a migraine I can do things but other days I am near tears so it is hard to understand why I can be active one day but not the next but still have a migraine both days. So using the pain scale helps him understand the level of activity I will be able to do that day. And understand that my pain might not be as bad today as it was last week.

Before I had the spoon theory I used to describe daily life like this...

The dishwasher needs to be unloaded and loaded. I have to measure all the factors that goes into the task and the environment that surrounds it. So the kitchen has a window over the sink that has quite a bit of light coming through it. It also has a skylight and the adjoining dining room has a window too. So the kitchen is fairly lite up, light hurts my migraine and can cause the pain level to spike up if I don't watch it closely. Next smells affect me so the fragrance in dishwasher detergent, some foods residue when rinsing off plates and other dishes might bother me, if I need to scour something a little more I use vinegar and baking powder (vinegar is not the most pleasant smell). Plus just that action of scrubbing harder can cause the blood to be pumping more (even just a little) and thus spike my migraine. When I unload and load the dishwasher I then wipe the sink and counters down the smell of what I clean it with can make my migraine worse. I am overly sensitive to smell with a migraine so if the trash has onion peels from the night before so I could be heading to the bathroom after unloading/loading dishwasher because the smell might make me sick to my stomach. Bending up and down over the dishwasher - the motion - can aggravate my head too - making it spike. I am sure there are other factors I am missing too that I have to add in.

So I wake in the morning with a migraine I might not be able to do it because of all the things that go into that simple daily task. If I am lucky I might get to do it in stages...unload the top rack and then walk away for a while. A pain level of 3 or 4 in my migraine, I might be able to unload and load all at once but usually I do have to rest after because I do cause it to spike a little and by resting then I can get it back to a 3 or 4. If I start to push too much I can send it over and make it the pain level spike to a 7 quickly and stay that way for the rest of the day.

The thing about this all....that if I didn't do things when it is a 3 or 4 I would NEVER accomplish anything. But I do have to say some days when there have been a string of them back to back, I wonder where is my quality of life? I feel angry that I don't get to do some things because of the migraine. I also feel guilt because I can't accomplish or keep up with some things because of it.

So there it is...I try to live each day the best I can and get the most I can accomplished and pray and hope that the next day I won't have a migraine so that I can do even more.