Life's a Stitch

Even if you've never had a migraine, please read this post, but read it to its end. You might have them in the future or know of someone who can benefit from this. I'll try to summarize so it isn't migraine inducing post due to its length. It's basically a series of clues that led to an effective  a not so effective treatment:

• I've had migraines for over 15 years.
• Recently I had 22 headaches in 6 weeks; all needing Imitrex and/or Tylenol 3.
• In preparation for a visit to a neurologist I kept a headache diary and found that only six were classic migraines. The others started with pain on both sides of my temples before zeroing in on the typical one sided migraine.
• No foods seemed to trigger the headaches, and although dr's kept telling me they were hormone related, it didn't seem cyclical in any way.
• The two sided pain was similar to headaches I experienced after being treated with traction for a neck injury.
• When given a guard for teeth grinding, it made the headaches worse.
• It is different and more complex than TMJ, it's a disorder of the trigeminal nerve.
• I happened to be at the dentist with an active headache and he had recently taken a course about this FDA approved treatment. I was very doubtful since the night guard was such a disaster, but in desperation, I agreed to try it.
• I've had one migraine in ten days and I'm cautiously optimistic.
• The only side effect is that my bite is rather wonky, but my dentist assures me he will address this.

Update: Not such a good update,actually. Fit of the device is crucial. I lost mine and my dentist made a new one. It fits slightly differently and the headaches are back. Unfortunately it can't be adjusted until he returns from vacation.

Another update after a year: It didn't work out well at all. The device changed my bite severely to a point where I had difficulty chewing and even my speech was affected. My jaw felt crooked and the headaches returned. Now, a couple of months after no device at all, things are feeling a little better. I've been to a neurologist, who feels my headaches are related to an old neck injury, and he will be trying Botox for migraines, which apparently has a very successful outcome. Good luck to all you who have arrived here after Googling for a migraine cure.

October 2008 Update – the Botox for migraines is working relatively well, with about a 75% reduction in the number of headaches. My Imitrex works for the remaining few. The Botox lasts about three months and there were no side effects. If you'd like further information, please leave a comment.

Knitting content: take a look at Darlene's version of my Herringbone Rib scarf, knit of Arte-new from Needful Yarns. The pattern is always available right here for the price of a comment.

Research demonstrates that given names can cause lifelong personal issues. Some kids get by with easy names and others, such as myself, have spent our entire lives spelling our names. I grew up with the name Lilice (sounds like Denise) Lesinski (doesn’t rhyme with anything, but my dad with his Polish sense of humour, in trying to explain the spelling, used to say "think of sin, think of me").

But what about the nicknames we acquired on the playground or those that stuck with us when an older sibling couldn’t pronounce our given moniker? Jayne, another Vancouver blogger recently posted about her playground nickname, Fishy Wishy in a Dishy, a second generation nickname derived from her family members dubbing her "Minnow." My cousin Elena grew up as Nana and my daughter, Elina, is Nonnie. For me it happened in eighth grade, Revlon came out with a lipstick called LeLips. It didn’t take long for the boys, conscious of my chatty ways, to change Lilice to LeLips. Anybody want to top that?

Signs that spring may turn into summer:

Sometimes a meme is just what you need for an easy post. Did I say easy? When Blogland was busy with 100 Things a About Me lists, I could only manage 59. Now I need to come up with 7 or 8 things, depending on where the tag originated, that aren’t on that list? OK, I’ll give it a shot. Thanks to Liberty, Suzanne, Sonya and "Criquette". Anyone else who wants to give it a go – consider yourself tagged.

1. At work I’d rather write in pencil than ink.

2. In high school and college I took Latin, French, Spanish and German. Can’t speak any one well enough and get Spanish and French hopelessly mixed up.

3. I live in a big ugly white dog of a house, but it’s interesting on the inside.

4. I appear to have figured out the cause of the 22 headaches/migraines I’ve had in six weeks. I’ve had migraines for over 15 years, but I was starting to consider them life ruining. More on the drugless cure later, but it’s not without side effects.

5. I have recently developed a positive relationship with a treadmill and I’m hoping it’s for keeps.

6. My nails are manicure resistant. Paying for one is a waste of money for me as they chip within 24 hours.

7. We are trying to live with one car and are finding it very difficult.

8. My latest knitting project combines a Barbara Walker book and some more of that beautifully coloured, but easily wrinkling cotton:

We’ve all survived, hopefully all a little wiser. Three things I’ve learned this week:

1. You can’t beat the support you get in blogland. Thank you to all for your reassurance and good advice. My favourite explanation for teen boys’ behaviour is that testosterone is a neurotoxin and that their brains are swimming in it.

2. I use extreme stress as an opportunity to eat things that normally never pass my lips – popcorn, chocolate, tuxedo cake, and the best? Cobbs lemon tarts. You Aussies and Vancouverites know what I’m talking about.

3. You know what they say about having a child later in life will keep you young? They lie.

I’m looking forward to a promising Saturday with Blogless Marsha in Edgemont Village. What’s on the agenda? A half spa day and visits to Urban Yarns and Cobbs. I’m not done with those lemon tarts.

Here’s the FO photo I didn’t get to post, the narrow version of Midwest Moonlight. I need advice – how do you get cotton to stay flat post bocking? I’ve even ironed it. Starch, maybe? I’m wondering if it’s because I tried to block it with straight edges when it’s supposed to have points along the way.

My Mother’s Day started at 1:30 a.m. Take two boys, ages 16 and 17, uncharacteristically exceeding their curfew; add a twelve pack of beer. While you’re at it throw in some poor judgment, a little mischief, and a romp through the woods in rugged terrain after dark, and what do you get? An ambulance ride and 30 plus internal and external leg stitches. Yes I’m talking about the same cowardly lion from a couple of posts back. His smile is not quite so big.

When you get a call like that in the middle of the night, the last thing you think about taking along is your knitting. We are thankful parents, it could have been way worse.

Just like a deep tissue massage, sometimes frogging just hurts so good. It seems I’m not alone. Donna has some lovely yarn that is destined to stay a center pull skein, Beth is turning pools of colours into a frog pond, and Blogless Marsha pulled out her hair swing sweater because some unreliable nasty knitter I dissuaded her from swatching. Meet my Sirdar Denim Ultra cardigan. Notice that all but one skein are re-wound:

At least my Midwest Moonlight scarf made it through unscathed and is happily blocking on an old Barney towel. Wet cotton does nothing for its beautiful colours.

While at the Seattle Knitting Expo Blogless Marsha and I took a class on Tunisian Crochet. It’s done on what looks like a crochet hook on steroids – the length of a long knitting needle and the thickness of a size 10 needle (6mm) for sport weight yarn. For worsted weight, the hook must be much thicker unless you want to produce a board. You never turn your work and there are three basic stitches – the simple stitch, the knit stitch, which looks like stockinette, and the purl. It’s supposedly faster and adaptable to most knitting patterns. I’m still pretty slow, but will give it an honest go.

Here is a simple stitch scarf in progress, done in a Fleece Artist smooth mohair, in the Wild Flowers colourway.

A sample with the same needle in Lorna’s Laces Lion and Lamb, in the Vera colourway, front and back:

One more, in a Fleece Artist fine loopy mohair in the Pinata colourway:

Here’s our lion!

This is the boy, who at age six, accompanied us to our high school’s production of Oliver. That night he confidently told us that he was going to be on that stage someday, and here he is. I am so thankful for this school-related positive experience for him, as academics haven’t been his strong suit recently.

There is nothing like a high school musical with an audience as vocal as fans at a basketball game. Can you pack any more smiles into one room? Knitting is going to have to wait, I can only handle so much excitement. So if you’re looking for me this weekend, I’ll be at the Capilano College theatre, every performance except for one.

Not really. We’re eight years from retirement, one of us pensionless, the other with a teensy-weensy one due to the recent sale of the company for which he works. We moved to Canada 24 years ago, young and oblivious to important life implications, simply because it was pretty. It’s been a good life, but we gave up a lot, the worst being proximity to family. It’s hard to raise kids without grandparents, cousins, and aunties.

What we didn’t count on giving up was Social Security. I had heard of other ex-pat’s discovering that they left the US without enough credits to collect SS, and not enough work experience in Canada to collect the full amount of Social Insurance. Being the type that wants to know what I’m in for, I insisted Chuck and I make trek to our "local" SS office, 80 miles away. He could not understand why I wanted to know so far in advance, but I bet you can. Give up? Because I want to know how much yarn I need to buy.

So, the good news is that we both have enough credits to qualify for a partial benefit. The bad news – it won’t start until age 66, well past our planned date. And the US will reduce the amount because we’ll be eligible for a partial Canadian benefit, and neither side can tell us by how much. I’m just going to rely on that blind faith we had 24 years ago and assume that both together will equal a normal benefit. And I don’t have to feel badly about not spending one penny at the two Washington yarn shops we visited that had 20% off everything.

Having camera difficulties, I reached back into my computer’s brain and found this picture of Mari and Ms.Grace. Does this look like a girl who had difficulty with the concept of having an animal living in the house with us?

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love, there is sentence I’m dying to quote, but can’t locate it from memory. It’s about how our culture reinforces hard hard work all week and then the weekend comes and all we can manage is to sit around the house in a semi-comatose state. That about describes me, but I do semi-comatose very well. I even enjoy it.

This week it hit me on Tuesday night. Recently work has involved a lot of public speaking and that particular activity chews me up and spits me out like a flavourless, spent wad of gum. I made myself do 20 minutes on the treadmill just to be sure I was really exhausted and to justify doing nothing for the rest of the evening. This sounds terribly Type A behaviouresque, doesn’t it.

Cooked up a batch of low fat cream of broccoli soup and at 8:15 I announced that I was retiring to the spare bedroom for a glorious night of uninterrupted sleep. Nobody was allowed to knock on my door unless they were bleeding profusely. Even them, 911 would probably be a more effective approach. I obtained commitment from the boy that he would get up on his own instead of the usual drill of me begging him seven times to get ready for school. And you know what? He managed it just fine. For him, it’s not about inability to get in the morning, it’s the payoff of our daily morning battle, but that’s another post.

So, I took a night off from life. Too tired to pick up even the lightest of knitting needles, not enough energy to read, the lights were out at 8:30. Knowing  I would be no good to anyone but myself, I took advantage of an opportunity to take care of nobody but ME. I highly recommend it. There were times in my life where this wouldn’t have been possible, but I guess it’s one of the benefits of getting older.

The next day I was ready to knit again: