Stress Relief

A big stressor in my life was just lifted from my shoulders this past week.  Our so sweet 20 month old had surgery on her kidney on Monday.  I am looking forward to my new life with a child with a healthy kidney.  A life where a small fever will not set off panic alarms and buttons in my head.  A life where the thought of surgery created knot after knot and the constant churn of nausea in my tummy.  She did just about as good as a baby can do and I am well pleased.  I am so grateful to have this experience behind us.  I know stress is a big factor to my headaches and I am interested to see how they change with this stress off my list.

Relaxation

Lately I have been trying to help my kids go to sleep.  Big Girl has troubles falling asleep like her mom.  Thankfully its not due to pain, its just because her mind runs a mile a minute and its hard to calm it down.  Little Man is pretty good about falling asleep, but he has his nights when he is restless.  They sleep in the same room, so they can antagonize each other too. 

I have resorted to using a relaxation technique where they hold muscles tight for a few seconds release.  I ask them to visualize the tension leaving their body.  This was a technique I learned when I was a little older then them.  It seems quite effective and only once or twice have they not settled completely down as a result.

When I was in High School I tried Bio-Feedback where different muscle groups were attached to sensors and I would "hear" if the tension was present or not. The idea was I could train myself to relax.  I remember many times laying there wondering why I would still feel so much pain if I was making those machines completely silent.  As a teenager, I wanted immediate results.  However as an adult I wonder if that relaxation allows for a nights rest which in turn will allow for less pain the next day, or after several nights rests allow for less pain over the next week.  I don't actively go through my muscle groups and tense and release them and I am training my children.  However I do relax and meditate, even in severe pain, because honestly, I what else can I do?

Log

This past week was a pretty good week as far as headaches go.  I was pretty sore and tired after the triathlon, but the high seemed to get me out of my rut.  That or the hormones finally leveled out.  Today was good too.  Last night I went to be pretty late- around 1:30.  Had crazy but good dreams(the kind you just don't want to wake up from) of long lost friend until the baby woke me around 3 and wouldn't go back to bed until 4.  This resulted in a grumpy mom at 7, and my poor kids put up with me.  I snapped out of the grumps and layed low.  I was even somewhat productive in my daily work.  Started a new course of scripture study for personal growth.  Cleaned up awesomely.  Had dinner ready for my family even though I ran out to go give blood as soon as husband got home from work.

I think I am ready to report to my doctor and realize I don't have a lot to tell her except a general overall impression of how I am feeling and a general impression of progress I can't really back up.  I need to start again on my headache log.  I have been reading up on several headache blogs the importance of communication to the docs and how valuable this sort of tool is in this communication.  I have tried to keep logs over my decades of suffering, however I am always unable to keep it going.  I have always tried to make my logs very detailed- I might just resort to a five minute recall at the end of the day and any general ideas as to why or why not I endured pain.  I need to do this.