Migraine clusters

My migraines have been pretty good lately.  I seem to have figured out a preventative dosage of Nortriptyline (20 mg twice a day), Topamax (100 mg twice a day), magnesium (400 mg twice a day) and B2 (400 mg once a day) that is keeping the migraines to only 2-3 times a week.  When they do come, they are fairly mild.  This week however, I've had them every day since Friday.  That's 5 days in a row and they are getting worse every day.  Today was terrible.  Sometimes, walking helps, but I walked Saturday for 4 miles, Sunday for 2 and Monday and today for about a mile each and nothing seems to make things better.  Usually keeping busy or sewing is enough to distract me and keep my mind off of wanting to bash my head into the wall, but again, as the day went on, that wall looked more and more like a good idea.

Perhaps it was the 'intruder on campus' drill we had today.  The old 'fire drill' is fading out and now we have to shake things up with new and improved ways to get kids riled up and excited.  Let's pretend there is a bad guy on campus who wants to shoot everyone during a passing period.  How fun would that be?  So, they announced it during a passing period and had all the kids run into an open classroom and hide.  Great for the kids who were in my classroom, but I had some random kids I didn't know that were headed to their classes.  I shut my door and there were kids banging on the door to get in.  Since my door doesn't have a window, I didn't know if it was the fake intruder or one of the students who just didn't make it on time and we were instructed not to open the doors for anyone.  Poor kids were left outside to fend for themselves.  The monitors had to round those kids up and shelter them in the bathrooms.

Like I said, 'let's get the kids all riled up' and then expect to teach them the rest of the day.

For those of you out there who have a regular job and can go to the bathroom whenever you want, take a minute and just think about how lucky you are.  Sometimes part of my migraine problem is I don't drink enough water.  My doctor yells at me because of that.  But imagine yourself trapped in a room for 3 hours not being able to use the restroom and really having to go and having to give a speech for 3 hours and pretend like you don't have to go!

Or, worse, knowing you have sick days, but choosing instead to go in to work because taking a day off is actually much more work than working when you are sick.

Luckily I have great students that will do pretty much anything I need them to do.  I never tell them I'm not feeling well, but if I need a day of not doing too much, I can give them a worksheet and they will happily answer book questions since I don't normally do that.  Most of the time when they do bookwork, it's homework so they are actually happy to get to do that for classwork.  They are weird and think it's a treat to do bookwork, weird kids :)

Oh, and another weird thing, we have 3 cases of chicken pox at my school.  The first one was in my class and the kid had been vaccinated and had a booster shot before 7th grade.  Not normal for him to get the disease after being vaccinated.  The second case, the student actually had the pox when he was little and now got it again.  Not sure on the 3rd student, but they finally notified parents today.  The boys are all on the basketball team so I know how it's spreading.  We have a lot of kids out with a terrible flu as well.  Having 3-4 kids out in every class makes it really hard to keep everyone up to speed and there are lots of kids coming in at lunch to make things up.  No breaks during the day makes for a really long day.

How many days until summer?  That's why we have so many breaks during the school year.  To break the cycle of illness and to give teachers a chance to go to the bathroom.