Losing it

In the past 24 hours, I've managed to lose a pair of glasses, the remote control for my bedroom TV, and my mailbox key.

The maddening aspect of this is that I know for a fact these items are somewhere in my house. I mean, I don't exactly take the TV remote out to run errands or anything. I haven't worn the pair of glasses I've misplaced outside the house for at least three months. I do take the mail key outside since that's where the box is, but it's a pretty short walk and for nearly nine years now, I've checked the mail and then, once I'm back inside, hung the key on this specific hook. And yet, somehow, it too is not where it should be.

I share all this because it's sort of a metaphor for how I'm feeling these days. Out of sorts. A little lost. Like the pieces of the the puzzle of my life don't quite fit together as cleanly as they used to or as they seem to for other people.

I haven't talked much about this, aside from a few oblique references, because I don't know that my battle against migraines is terribly interesting. It boils down, on some level, to an equation of Head Hurts + Medicine - Brain Power + Discomfort. But a dear brother in Christ urged me yesterday to talk about this part of things, that it's part of my life just as the pets or the job or the YouTube kitten videos are.

The preventative medication I'm taking nowadays is an anticonvulsant -- not as intellectually stunting as the Topamax was, but I'm still pretty much dumber than a bag of hammers (a very sleepy, yawning bag of hammers). It definitely blunts my creativity: finding the right word is a challenge, and my problem solving and capacity to synthesize data or concepts are limited, too -- and, to some measure along with them, my me-ness. Since I can't really engage as quickly or fully in conversation as I once could, I tend to hang back more. Coupling that with how sleepy the drugs make me -- I am drinking a whole lot of coffee and Red Bull in the afternoon these days -- I'm not exactly a social butterfly.

And that's become my real struggle -- at what point is the medication the problem versus the pain? How much of myself am I willing to shut down or drug away as part of the pain management process? My doctor and various Internet message boards assure me that the side effects will abate in time, so for now I'm willing to wait it out. Every day I weigh this, and so far, even with the dopiness and limited intellectual capacity, the medication wins: the pain is less, I think, overall, and I can still more or less function. But I'm definitely nearing the tipping point.