Yesterday, something weird happened

At around 4:00 I started getting a pretty bad headache. It got to the point where I thought if I moved my head while my eyes were open I would puke. At around 5:30 I decided I should lie down for a while. At 3:00 in the morning, I woke up to find myself in bed wearing all my clothes with a blanket on top of my head. At this point I felt better than I had for months, well rested and clear headed to a point that made me wonder how I had functioned or even lived feeling like I had for as long as I can remember. I also had short, broken memories of things that had happened in the past 10 hours, but no idea of when or in what order they happened. I changed and drank and went back to bed, fearing that I would be unable to sleep again. However I lied awake for about half an hour thinking about Zelda (yeah, I think about Zelda a lot) and then slept until 7:00 this morning. At that point I felt tired again, and now I feel the same way I felt up until 3:00 this morning, tired and unable to think clearly. So what this tells me is, I'm ****** up. Just felt like sharing that.

When I feel that way, it's usually down to what I'm smoking.... :eek:

you're probably no more screwed up than the rest of us, but if it ever gets to the point of concern it doesn't do any harm to seek a medical opinion.... you can always ignore it!

Can and will! Thanks Doc!

Sounds like food poisoning. Have ya eaten or drank anything weird lately?
... and um... how's the relationship with the wife/girlfriend?

Originally Posted by: schmangeSounds like food poisoning. Have ya eaten or drank anything weird lately?
... and um... how's the relationship with the wife/girlfriend?

Now that you mention it, I did eat a sack of sandwiches from some kind of Women's Institute hooplah they had last weekend. And as you can probably guess from the previous statement, I don't have a girlfriend.

Sounds like a migraine to me. I've been getting about 2-3 a year since I was like 15.

Dump em man... and anything else you might have eaten up to 24 hours before you got sick. With that level of intensity in your symptoms, it's probably not a virus or anything, so that pretty much leaves food, liquids or something in the environment. (cabon monoxide poisoning)

Originally Posted by: schmangeDump em man... and anything else you might have eaten up to 24 hours before you got sick. With that level of intensity in your symptoms, it's probably not a virus or anything, so that pretty much leaves food, liquids or something in the environment. (cabon monoxide poisoning)

Well seeing as nobody else in the house got sick it probably wasn't environmental. If it was something I ate, wouldn't I have felt it in my stomach though? My stomach was absolutely fine. It was just my whole head area. It felt like...my head was going to throw up, I guess. Actually it kind of feels that way now. It's felt like that many times in my childhood, but never as serious as that was, which is probably why I thought it was a new thing. In reality it's a recurring thing that just suddenly after all these years decided to get a lot worse. It seems like it happens the most when I'm riding the bus home from school. Which would actually be around the time it happened yesterday, just maybe an hour earlier than that. The more I think of it the more I think this is not a new thing at all. These thoughts aren't very clear right now, I'm pretty much just writing down stuff as I think of it. I don't really know what to think about this now. Just that it's awful.

Don't know aboot the headache, but the feeling you got, the weird one, is a normal thing i get whenever i have mid-day naps. Your body just aint used to it.

Did ya eat a bunch of halloween candy recently?
I ate a bunch of Skittles and Rocket candies this morning, went to sleep feeling great & woke up this afternoon with a huge pounding headache.

sometimes i get bad headaches from exhaustion other week i was up and movin around for approximatly 17 hours and at the end i felt like i was gunna puke and had a horrible headache, a good nights sleep sorted that out tho

yeah.... all sorts of things could explain it...

Kev's right with the candy suggestion - if you're blood sugar is all over the place, that could make you feel like crap, and explain the headaches in one go. Dehydration will also cause you problems.

Magic's got a point with the migraines - when I get em they screw me up and I have to go to bed, but I personally 'see things' in my peripheral vision and my eyes get messed up, and you didn't mention that - dunno if that's common, or just me.

If it happens when you're on the bus, it could be a bit of motion sickness helping out as well. What happens on weekends or whatever when your pattern is different?

Loads of these things are dietary. My mom used to get migraines almost all the time right up until she saw a dietician who told her not to eat and chocolate or dairy products. She did that and went straight from a migraine every couple of weeks to none at all for years. When I was ill a few years back I stopped eating everything but brown rice, and gradually re-introduced stuff - It turned out that tomatoes give me migraines.... and I could eat one to prove it if necessary (but I don't want to!)....

you could explore some of that... ?

**EDIT** - I've just re-read your original post, and you say you can't move your head with your eyes open 'cos you'll puke..... it's sounding more and more like a migraine to me as well... if it is, finding the trigger is the challenge...

If something comes on suddenly, I'll usually suspect dietary first.
Most stuff in your life is constant but the one thing that changes on a daily basis is what you put into your body.

You're definitely right about eliminating everything from your diet and then slowly reintroducing stuff. It took me years to finally figure out that my constant stomache pain was caused by peanut butter, eggs or fried onions.
Even longer to figure out that freshly ground pepper gives me symptoms like asthma or dill pickles giving me major nightmares. (seriously man... a coupla pickles before bed and I have some really intense, disturbing dreams.)

Sometimes it's fun to experiment. Stick to nothing but cheese sandwiches for a week and then eat a big salad on the weekend.
Holy Crap!! Literally.

Medication can also have a really delayed effect. If you've been prescribed something for a long time and suddenly go off it, it can take a full week before you feel the symptoms.

Well I didn't have any naps, so that isn't it.

I didn't eat any candy that day. But even if I had, I've eaten huge amounts of candy before and nothing bad has ever happened.

I suppose it could be dietary, but I've had a lot of dietary and digestive type problems and this wasn't anything like that. Plus, again, I didn't eat anything that I haven't eaten before and been fine.

The motion sickness thing does show promise though. I've thought that before, especially since it happens on the bus a lot. It also happens if I play a video game for too long, or if I'm on the computer for a long time like I was that day. But it's never been as serious as it was that day, so I think that even if motion sickness was part of it there must have been something else to it as well.

I've been reading some stuff about migraines. A lot of it seems like it matches up. "Migraine headaches are usually characterized by severe pain on one or both sides of the head." "Migraines are often accompanied by photophobia (hypersensitivity to light), phonophobia (hypersensitivity to sound) and nausea."

It talks about the phases:
Prodrome phase "may consist of altered mood, irritability, depression or euphoria, fatigue, yawning, excessive sleepiness, craving for certain food (e.g., chocolate), stiff muscles (especially in the neck), constipation or diarrhea, increased urination, and other vegetative symptoms."
I'd say that matches up because around the time this happens I usually feel really bad and depressed, and don't want to move or speak.
The aura phase is basically when all your senses are screwed up, like for me when I can't look at things or hear things without pain or nausea.
The pain phase is pretty obvious, it also fits in how it says that activity can make it worse, which is true for me. If I do anything other than remain in one position with my eyes closed unmoving, it intensifies.
Postdrome phase, "some people feel unusually refreshed or euphoric after an attack", that describes what happened that day. "The patient may feel tired, "washed out", irritable, listless and may have impaired concentration, scalp tenderness or mood changes." Aside from the "scalp tenderness", that describes what happened the next day, and what usually happens on the less serious occasions.

So now that I look at it, I've probably just been having migraines for most of my life and not known it. I don't know what made it so bad that time, probably a combination of things including what I ate, extended computer time, maybe even weather. I guess if I can figure out exactly what it was I'll have a better chance of being able to stop it. Unless it's a tumor, which just now occured to me. I'm kind of hoping it isn't though.

Originally Posted by: acapella...So now that I look at it, I've probably just been having migraines for most of my life and not known it. I don't know what made it so bad that time, probably a combination of things including what I ate, extended computer time, maybe even weather. I guess if I can figure out exactly what it was I'll have a better chance of being able to stop it. Unless it's a tumor, which just now occured to me. I'm kind of hoping it isn't though.

For me it was always a pile of things coming in together - stress, lack of sleep, not eating properly, dehydration.... it's like a checklist, and the more contributing factors you can list, the more likely it is to happen.

On the diet thing - keep in mind that you can wake up tomorrow and find you have allergic reactions to something you've been eating for years... also bear in mind that we're only talking about a trigger for a migraine, not necessarily food as the explanation for all symptoms straight up.

I hope you haven't got a tumor as well.... :D It's way less likely than you having a migraine, so don't panic just yet dude.... Keep a diary of what you eat and drink plus how much sleep you get for a month, and see whether you can see a pattern between headaches/crappy feeling and what you're doing.... note any time you feel more stressed than usual - anything interesting... you should be able to figure it out...

Originally Posted by: zreynoldspKeep a diary of what you eat and drink plus how much sleep you get for a month, and see whether you can see a pattern between headaches/crappy feeling and what you're doing....

That's a good idea, I think I'll do just that.

Yeah when I get migraines I can't be around light or noise at all. I don't get nausea that I remember. Usually taking some ibuprofin and taking an hour nap clears it up. It's enough to ruin a whole day though.

I get really bad Sinus headaches that make me feel the way you described. Just something else to look into.

I used to get what the Doc called Optical Migraines, I would loose half of my vision (literally one side or the other) but never had the pain. When my vision would start coming back after about 30 minutes, I'd get extremely sick for about an hour.....It was weird b/c I only experienced that about twice a week for about 3 months. That was around 10-11 years ago. The Doc said at the time they were from stress. Makes sense since that was the time I first went off to college.

Originally Posted by: JFRICKI get really bad Sinus headaches that make me feel the way you described. Just something else to look into.

Interesting. Now that you mention it, I've had some pretty bad sinus problems in the past. I'll look into that.

Examine your sleep habits... I suffered sleep deprevation for most of my freshman and sophomore years in college... due to the fact that I was taking 19 hours of mechanical engineering classes and had 3 baseball practices a day... one in which was at 5:30 in the morning.... So examine your sleep habits... you should get more than 8 hours of sleep every night. When I suffered sleep deprevation I was only getting between 2 and 3 hours of sleep a night... after about a month of it my body shut down. It started with a terrible headache... then I was so weak I just wanted to stay in bed... then I had a fever... I slept for almost 15 hours straight... then slept for about 15 more... After that I felt much better... I still get rundown like that every two months or so.... that's one thing to look at.

Also monitor your caffeine intake. Almost 75% of Americans suffer from some level of caffeine addiction... Headaches are a main symptom of caffeine withdrawl. Many people take medicines to remedy the migraine like Excedrin when all they really need is a cup of coffee... Hence the reason why the makers of Excedrin put caffeine in the actual ingredients of the medication... So that's something else to look at.