I started knitting as a way of making myself be productive instead of just laying around feeling sorry for myself. I could (can) no longer work as a computer scientist. I often can't think straight at all, between the pain and the meds. But I don't have to think straight to knit. I just have to knit. Purl. Knit. Purl. And I have to say I've made some beautiful things in this year of pain.
Same with the writing. I can't drive myself to work, spend eight hours at a job which requires logic and attention, and then drive myself home - but I can spend a few hours here and a few hours there writing. At home, on my laptop, when I have a few blessed lucid hours straight. It's taking a long time (over a year already) but my YA alternate-reality time-travel novel, Spinning Coins, is almost done. I can go weeks or even months at a time without adding a chapter, but it's always there waiting for me. Unlike my computer science job, where, oddly, they needed me there regularly.
I do have hopes of ending this seemingly-endless migraine abyss. I already have an ONSTIM (Occipital Nerve Stimulation for the Treatment of Intractable Migraines) which gives me what lucid hours I have. The ONSTIM is basically electrodes in my head which interrupt the pain signals between my occipital nerve and my brain. (The rechargeable battery pack is in my left buttock; my nine-year-old is amused when I "can't get a signal out of my butt" to recharge it.)
And soon I'll be having surgery to fix my PFO (Patent Foramen Ovale), a tiny hole between the top two chambers of my heart. PFOs have recently been linked to chronic migraines, since unfiltered blood can pass to the brain.
In the meantime, I continue to try every migraine med known to man, and may go for Botox injections for other nerves soon, too.
