Painkillers Are a Girl's Best Friend

Have you ever had a migraine? No, not the little twinge of pain you feel for all of two seconds. A proper, honest-to-god migraine. The kind you wake up in the morning with: a low, steady drumbeat in the back of your head that throbs when you make any sudden movements. It’s the migraine that plants itself right in the middle of your brain for the entire day. You never see it coming the night before (it isn’t known for giving out warning signs anyway.)

And when you do suddenly jerk your head to the side, the shockwaves that result are strong enough to be felt all the way down to the tips of your toes. You reel back, dizzy and disoriented, for several seconds (maybe even a minute) because the pounding refuses to stop even after you’ve brought your whole body to a standstill. Your breathing evens out and slows down as your fingers gingerly touch your forehead where an immense pressure pushes against your eyeballs.

A sigh of relief escapes you when at last the aftermath fades and you are left with that constant buh-bum rhythm in the background. And yes, today I had that sort of migraine.