As I went to bed last night there was no sign of anything amiss. It had been a busy but okay day followed by a trip to Hakalok. I had listened to The Magic Flute and been very restrained in indulgence terms. So why was it that as I woke half an hour or so before my alarm went off that I had a blinding headache? Realising it wasn't going to go away I phoned in, took some paracetamol and went back to bed.
When I emerged a few hours later there was no sign of said headache abating. Now another few hours have gone by, I'm on my second dose of paracetamol and still it hangs on to me. Needing a prescription I did venture out for a short while. It was bitterly cold, utterly grey and the air was flecked with snow. I returned pretty quickly.
I can find no explanation for this turn of events. True that at various stages of my life I have been plagued by unexplained headaches. I recall a summer holiday during my school days when I was wiped out for days at a time. When my illness struck so suddenly in 1990 one of the physical manifestations was endless headaches. At one stage I was taking 8 codeine a day to counter it but to no avail.
Migraines play a part in the lives of my sister, sometimes dad and a number of friends. That seems to me a legitimate reason to stay away from work. My office has in the last few weeks been ravaged by flu. I don't bat an eyelid at people being off for that. On the contrary I am the first to advise people only come back when well. So why can't I apply that to me?
With Prokofiev on the radio and now back in the warm I'm wracked with the guilt of not doing what I need to do. I'm being good at berating myself. Perhaps because I lost so much of my life to illness. Perhaps that those of us with mood disorders perpetually beat ourselves up except in the god like times of elevated mood and champion egotism.
Given time no doubt it will leave me. But I'm impatient...and guilty.
I Heard a Voice.
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