And now, a wee rant

[mme_hardy]

...which may just have been building for some time.

Migraine is not ... a headache.
Depression is not ... the blues.
Autism is not ... bad social skills.
Hyperemesis gravidarum is not ... morning sickness.

If you have, or know somebody who has, any of the problems on the right, this tells you nothing about coping with the problems on the left.

Comments

[recessional]

Funnily, these days I can get tension headaches that can be more painful than my migraines. Can be - nowhere near always, but can be.

....they just don't come with auras, nausea, hypersensitivity to light or the feeling that I'm slightly drunk (and the absolute knowledge I am impaired as far as driving goes.)

(I am also admittedly VERY lucky, comparatively, when it comes to migraine pain and always have been. But the other symptoms can be Exciting.)

/share.

[mme_hardy]

There are a lot of kinds of evil headaches; cluster headaches sound much worse to me even than migraine.

I always felt I was lucky not to have hemiplegia, so there you go.

[recessional]

Oof, yeah.

I am....less than thrilled with the apparent new trick of mine where the prodrome manifests as a violent and painful mood crash and self-loathing. But I'm lucky enough that I can use OTC painkillers for the actual pain, so I don't complain.

[kore]

ahahaha one of the first times ever I got a migraine as an adult (had had them on and off since childhood, but with weird varying symptoms), I got the lights-going-dim entering-the-tunnel along with the classic checkerboard and thought I was having a stroke. FUN TIMES.

[recessional]

OMG, suck. D:

[kore]

Yeah, and then I read Sacks's Migraine book (BLESS YOU SACKS) and discovered the little freaky paintings of migraine visual whatsits looked....almost exactly like the doodles I had been making since grade school. Heh.

I also wound up in an ER convinced my retina was detaching after about half an hour of little flashy glowing patches, like the after-image from a lightbulb flash. No! Just a migraine indicator. WTF.

[staranise]

Yeah, I've never had a migraine, but that doesn't mean my tension headaches aren't total motherfuckers that have made me call in sick before.

[green_knight]

My personal unfavorites:

Writer's block is not... being stuck.

Being stuck can be awful and leech a lot of energy, but it's related to whatever you were working on, and if you switch projects, you'll be fine again. Writer's [etc] block is anxiety-related, and can make one feel sick even just _thinking_ about the thing one is meant to do. Sitting down anf forcing yourself to do it is likely to result in more anxiety. (I had to stop coding for two years before I could face it again. Oh, and I lost a freelance business in the process because I just Could Not face it.)


A bolting horse... did not run away

A bolt is the equine equivalent of a panic attack - the horse will run without taking any sensory input whatsoever, whether from the rider/driver, nor from fences and other solid objects. They've a danger to everyone including themselves. It's extremely rare. Horses running away, on the other hand, is common and happens for a myriad of reasons. Most of which are preventable or easily remedied by a good rider.

[mme_hardy]

I had no idea, about bolting. Thank you!

[green_knight]

I've been bolted with three times. The first time on a horse that was as unathletic as they come - I had no influence whatsoever, and Dobbin ran head-first into a metal wall (we left a dent!) but due to the slowness of the event, it didn't feel scary. At the time I didn't register what had happened.

The (probably) second time was over very quickly, and the horse came out of it on his own, and again it was only in hindsight that I realised just *how* little control I had - we're talking twenty meters and blazing speed, so it was over quicker than I could have reacted, so that might not have been a true bolt after all.

The third time was the real thing. It felt like sitting in the backseat of a driverles car which was hurtling down the motorway - there was nothing whatsoever that I could have done to influence what was happening. The horse was in pain, as I worked out afterwards, but it was _frightening_. I've been run away with many times, sometimes at high speeds, sometimes across open countryside - it's never nice, but I learnt how to a) anticipate and b) stop it, so a runaway never struck me as particularly scary.
A bolt is... in a category of its own, and you definitely recognise it when you encounter it. Thankfully, it's extremely rare - in twenty years I've encountered three horses, all three extremely anxious types (the first one died thanks to running through a fence and into a car when she was two, I knew her as a foal). The first one probably was hereditary, the other two had major undiagnosed pain issues.

But yes - like all panic/anxiety issues, hearing someone shrug it off is infuriating.

Oh, it's like when I...

[mme_hardy]

Children, if you can't play responsibly with your analogies, we are taking them away. Don't make me stop this Internet.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[legionseagle]

I don't think your remark is entirely well judged.

One of the most terrifying things that ever happened to me in my entire life happened when I was - what I have colloquially for the last thirty-seven years and (it would appear) apparently completely offensively referred to as - "bolted with on a pony" when I was a shade over my 13th birthday. It was painful, degrading (I experienced first hand that sort of ableism where someone speaks above the head of the person who can only sit down because of the broken leg and assumes that the injured person is deaf,too) and left me with a permanent weakness in the ankle in question.

Technically, I may not have been bolted with. However, I was shit-scared, and the physical and mental effects were permanent. Take the internet from me if you dare.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[mme_hardy]

I don't know from horses, so the news that "bolting" isn't the same as "running away" was news to me.

The point I understood green_knight to be making is that being run away with is, although bad, not the same thing as being bolted with. That's what I meant by the added title "Oh, it's like when I" and the discussion about analogies, and indeed what I meant in the original post.

Your experience with the runaway horse sounds horrible.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[legionseagle]

Sorry, but read what I said.

green_knight knows perfectly well that you can be killed and maimed just as effectively whether you're run away with or bolted with. What she's doing is saying the first one is the rider's fault and the second isn't. What I'm saying is that may well be true but it doesn't stop the effects hurting.

When you agree with green_knight what you're actually saying is that riders like me - that is, rather young and incompetent riders - deserved exactly what we got, namely mildly crippling injuries.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[green_knight]

Nobody deserves to be hurt, ever; and one should try one's best not to put people into the way of the potential injuries. Nor am I saying that it's 'the rider's fault' (if you were a beginner under the control of someone else it's much more likely to have been *their* fault for not training the horse, for not setting up a safe situation, for misjudging the horse's mood/the general situation/your skills, for not teaching you to cope etc.

But even at the best of times, it happens that horses will take off - they're flight animals. Mostly, it can be dealt with.

(I also feel that your 'I was bolted with and got terribly injured' isn't a 'problem' in the context of the discussion. What is the problem are the people who say 'oh, the horse bolted and I was able to shut it down easily' because if you could shut it down easily, _it was not a bolt_.

And again, I am sorry to hear about your injury and the consequences thereof.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[recessional]

I think that's where the big miscommunication is here? You're not talking about the effect of bolt-vs-runaway on the RIDER. You're talking about its origins in the horse - anxiety issue vs normal prey-animal behaviour.

Either can be equally devastating or equally a non-issue for the rider (see: your story about the first bolt on the unathletic horse) depending on circumstances; but FOR THE HORSE, running away is just a thing, whereas bolting is a panic attack.

(Sorry to intrude, but I both want to check that this is the right reading, and I thought it might be useful to be seriously explicit about it.)

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[green_knight]

You're talking about its origins in the horse - anxiety issue vs normal prey-animal behaviour.

That sums it up better than I did; thank you.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[mme_hardy]

Thank you. That makes my mind much clearer. I think that's a really useful distinction.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[legionseagle]

Also, try to explain "Children" and "play responsibly with" and "we are taking them away" in the previous context, while you're at it.

Re: Oh, it's like when I...

[kore]

I think something that got said pushed a button for you and you're being rude.

[legionseagle]

Actually, if you're a nervous rider and have been run away with, this comes over as patronising and dismissive. No matter that you could have died from concussion, no matter if you spent six weeks lying immobilised on a sofa with a broken ankle, no matter how much guilt you were already feeling because you should have stood up (I tried; I felt my broken bone shift sideways in my boot as I put weight on it and fell fainting and vomiting to the icy lane) and GOT BACK ON THE FUCKING HORSE apparently one was only "run away with" so even daring to suggest that one might have been - yanno - permanently (mildly) disabled means one's clearly over-reacting.

[green_knight]

I am sorry that you had a bad experience and that it had such a horrid outcome.

But I think there are three things in play here.

(Zero: I can't judge what happened on that day and whether it was a genuine accident or an accident-waiting-to-happen: given how moronic the person chasing you back on the horse was, there's a good chance that there were other things lacking from their horsemanship.)

But assuming that the horse had run away with you -

- in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, behaviourwise. It becomes dangerous due to outside factors (running away around cars, on slippery surfaces, when there are dangerous items or vulnerable people about), but _behaviourally_, it's NBD. Horses do this, and you can train them - and their riders - to avoid it happening.

- nobody said that the 'lesser' thing was trivial in itself, see painfulness of cluster headache. Just that they are not the same, and experience of one does not give you experience of the other.

- for you, personally, it was a lousy experience. It was dangerous, and it was extremely badly handled, and you're not overreacting to your pain and the consequences of your injury at all, nor are you overreacting to mistreatment you received when you said that you were injured - there's absolutely no excuse for that. Ever.
That you were just as badly scared or injured on a runaway as I was as the result of a bolt (shattered collarbone, torn rotator cuff, strained back muscle) isn't a reflection on the equine behaviour, anymore than the same injuries sustained if the horse had gone 'eek' and slipped on the tarmac would make that behaviour in any way comparable to bolting.

I'm sorry if I came across as trivialising your injuries - that's the last thing I meant to do, and just as you deal with the horse in front of you, regardless of what you think it 'should' be doing, you deal with the rider in front of you - and if someone is injured you don't tell them that the injury doesn't count because of how it was attained. As I said, that was not my intention.

[kore]

Nobody even said anything close to that. The original remark was "A bolt is the equine equivalent of a panic attack" and the only even vaguely critical thing was that a runaway horse can be "preventable or easily remedied by a good rider." Nobody's saying you weren't terrified or your pain wasn't real or that you weren't in a horrible situation, and you're being super-defensive, insulting and angry about stuff that nobody said.

[mme_hardy]

I think green knight and Recessional have done a good job of reaching a solid common ground without further conflict, and I'd like to stay on that common ground.

[kore]

Well, I see people humouring someone who's entirely derailing the conversation out of misplaced anger like a toddler who needs a time-out, but it's obviously your call.

[mme_hardy]

It is my call. Please stop it.

[mme_hardy]

I'm trying to claw myself out from a lot of Can Not Face It at the moment, and it's a hard problem.

[ellen_fremedon]

And a panic attack is not... being nervous.

I've gotten panic attacks in motor vehicles since early childhood; they're why I've never learned to drive. They feel like an iron band tightening around my collarbones and forcing all the air out of my lungs. They're horrible.

And I get them in circumstances that don't make me the slightest bit nervous. Icy roads make me nervous. Riding with someone with road rage makes me nervous.

Long gentle curves at moderate highway speeds don't make me nervous. But one time in two hundred-- or one time in a hundred if the vehicle is particularly low-slung and there's a low hill intersecting the curve-- they will make me feel like I'm suffocating, for minutes at a time.

[recessional]

. . . . *lightbulb* OH. That's right. Real block IS anxiety.

(There are a few things/areas I am or have previously been truly *blocked* on; for me it doesn't manifest as anxious in a way I recognized, but it does manifest as being totally and completely unable to string words together around the ideas in my head, which is a thing I've lately realized is probably the most intense expression of anxiety overload. It just is a full shut-down, rather than FEELING anything as such.)

[legionseagle]

I wasn't a good rider. If not duffers, won't drown, eh?

[green_knight]

Don't get me started on the rant of 'only fearless people who are super athletic should be riding, we don't want to see anyone else on the back of a horse'. I've been in one yard where the expectation was that if you fell off, you'd want to ride the horse again so you could prove next time that you could master it.

Me, I just wanted to ride the nice ones because life it too short to get injured needlessly. Once I had the ability and determination to walk away (which I didn't have as a teenager), I would rather forfeit a ride than endanger myself. Back then, I simply was lucky.

[legionseagle]

Thank you. I'm sorry I misread your original comment; I do see that from the point of view of the horse, the bolt/running away vs hyperemesis gravidarum/morning sickness comparison does work, whereas I was seeing it from the point of view of the rider, so the comparison between life-threatening condition/condition which causes discomfort did cause me real difficulty.

[kore]

That is SO TRUE about writer's block. Another thing I hate is "you don't hear of plumbers getting plumber's block, do you?" Well, no, because that's an external job. It's hard labour, but it's also an external physical thing you can focus on. (That's why in the past it always helped me to switch to drawing/painting or playing music when horribly stuck on writing -- sketching something or playing scales was a relief!)

[sara]

I was hospitalized twice for vomiting so hard I threw up blood (like, for hours) with my second pregnancy. It's a good thing to have access to anti-nausea drugs and IVs. It's not an overreaction to be hospitalized for something like that....

[perennialanna]

I still remember the blissful feeling as the intravenous anti-emetics worked and for the first time in 28 weeks I stopped feeling sick. That was after throwing up blood too.

An awful lot of commentators are assuring us that hyperemesis goes away at 13ish weeks. Wouldn't that be nice?

[sara]

Oh, it sure would. I think my second hospitalization was sometime late in the second trimester.

I have told the boychild that he owes me, pretty much forever. He tends to agree.

[mme_hardy]

People used to *die* of h.g. There's some evidence that's what got Charlotte Bronte. This is not "eat some crackers and lie down" territory.

Threw up blood? Holy crap. That's awful.

BTW, does Herself know about Nimona? She needs to. http://gingerhaze.com/nimona/comic/page-1

[sara]

Oh, whenever people ask what era of history I would like to live in, I say, THIS ONE, because in any other I would have died of pregnancy-related complications. It was hideous.

No, but I will pass that on!

[perennialanna]

Oh absolutely. Much as I resented the medicalisation of my second pregnancy, I had gestational diabetes, it was only a strict diet and constant checks that kept me and the baby safe (best diet for sickness was all the carbs. Best diet for GD was none of the carbs. It was interesting, but we survived).

[mme_hardy]

My standard answer is "I like antibiotics and feminism, thanks." Although both the antibiotics and the feminism are looking creakier than they used to.

[kore]

I dunno if my mom and/or I would have died, since I was her first baby, butyeah, thank you Dr William Pollack and the Rh vaccine! (Actually, if she'd been pregnant before me -- never asked -- I guess I would've been a goner. Yikes.)

[kore]

Yeah, apparently that's what got Charlotte -- that or maybe typhoid, altho she was so wrecked from the inability to eat and constant vomiting it would've definitely been a comorbid thing.

[kore]

People SEEM TO be getting a little better about depression, maybe maybe, at least from what I can see.

But, GOD, a migraine is not "a headache." No. It is not even "a bad headache." One comparison that seems to work is telling people that a headache is like a migraine the way acid reflux is like a heart attack, but then they just look all shocked. sigh.

[recessional]

I have had a little luck explaining that it's not really about headaches (you CAN get atypical migraines that manifest only as the aura and the rest of the weird symptoms - doesn't happen often, but I found that out when my friend got diagnosed after being terrified about brain cancer for a while due to neurological symptoms), it's a neurological condition which has headaches as one of its symptoms, and the headaches can be epically and overwhelmingly bad but come with all the rest of this stuff TOO.

And then assuring them they can have the worst headaches ever without, in fact, having migraines.

MMV, of course.

[kore]

it's a neurological condition which has headaches as one of its symptoms

Oh, I like that! That makes sense. That would explain the freaky-ass visual effects and the mood stuff, too. - Sometimes I can get oddly excited right before a migraine. It's not hypomania exactly, it's like...agitation but not unpleasant? Weird. One friend of mine has auras so weird you would swear she was drunk -- staggering around, slurring her words, double vision, &c &c. Definitely something going on in the brain there.

[recessional]

Yeah, these days my prodrome are a huge mood-crash and then during and afterwards (but I don't really notice during as I am usually passed out with painkillers) I'm slow-brained, clumsy, forgetful and can't remember a damn thing - and then about two or three hours after, I end up with this weird euphoria.

MIGRAINES: freaking weird, man.

[mme_hardy]

My postdrome comes with a double depression chaser. I hate you, my brain tissue (though not my brain).

[mme_hardy]

I have two different family members who don't get pain with migraines; in both cases it's the cognitive effects that are the disabling ones. For that matter, lately most of my problems are being cognitive rather than pain; I haven't been thinking well for the last week.

Weird, weird disease.

[rinue]

The one that frustrates me most is when people call things schizophrenic to mean dual-faceted. (Many of these people think schizophrenia means multiple personality disorder, so the inaccuracy is layered.)

But a close second is when people say that someone (including themselves) is "totally OCD about [blank]" when what they mean is they have a preference.