Abit about Lewis Carroll

I've been knocked around all weekend with this little storm. I'm waiting for it to go away, for my meds to kick in, or kick it out. Three days of abortives now, and I don't like to go over that, for fear of the dreaded rebound to hit me.

I was hit pretty hard yesterday while we were shopping. I bent down to pick up Q-tips, I should know better than to bend down, but we were out. We needed them. But when I started to stand up, tht's when the ice pick hit, deep inside my skull, and hard and fast. I couldn't move, I was frozen there between the bend and stand. I couldn't hear right, just a muffling sound around me, and I was losing my vision in my right eye, the black sand. And then the nausea. I knew I was in for it, deep inside I knew, but I tried to block it, tried to ignore it, like always, thinking, wishing, hoping it would go away. I found Frank, and he was talking to a friend I hadn't seen in probably 5 years - about, what else, MIGRAINES!!!!! And naturally, I start feeling it all come on heavy, but I'm still suppressing it, yeah, stupid, I know. Like it's really going to go away if I think it away. She starts asking me questions about medication and stuff and I tried to answer her, and that's wehn it was all over for me, and he knew it, and I finally knew, and she could see that I was different than the woman she knew back then.

I couldn't speak. My words were now jumbled and not coming. I couldn't remember anything I was taking to tell her of. My tongue felt as if it was swollen and numb, so my words were almost impossible to pronounce. I had to hold her cart and ours for balance, because the motion of the people around me were making my balance much worse. We exchanged numbers and Frank and I finally started to walk; he with his gimp from his knee injury, and I with that awkward neurological stupid walk I have when the big one is coming on. He kept asking me if I needed to go to the car, and I refused. I'm stubborn that way. All the while, the picking was working it's way, bit--by-bit back into my skull, deeper and deeper. With each blow, I could feel my legs getting weaker and weaker; and he could see it. He can always see it. I can never hide it from him.

We get to the cereal isle, and as I reached for the box I wanted, I knew I was finally defeated; I couldn't move, frozen again. Totally frozen. Legs wouldn't move, I couldn't speak, I could feel my whole right side about to just go out from under me. I was completely frozen - I just couldn't move. And he was watching me, and asking me what I wanted, and he could see it in my face - and he imitated my movement, or lack of, the jerkiness, and my face - and we just started laughing. I mean, what else can we do??

That's how we handle it - we laugh at IT, because what other choice do we? We've both done the crying, and that only brought frustration and defeat. At least if we laugh, we just move on. I don't feel sorry for myself, it's just not my way - I have actually thanked God for my disease. Crazy, yeah. But I believe He has made me a stronger person in it in many ways. I am a fighter. For one, it has brought me back to Him. For that reason alone, I am thankful. He gets me through it everyday.

We found this great second-hand bookstore Friday night - a new favorite place for me. Anyway, I picked up The COMPLETE (yeaah) All of Lewis Carroll's stories, verses, puzzles,etc.. everything - in ONE BOOK!!! OK so you can see I'm excited about it. I went in looking for Through the Looking Glass but they didn't have it, this was all they had. I have been going nuts with it. Knowing he was a migraineur and being told I could find some of his suffering in his writing, I've been eager to find, check this out:

From PHOTOGRAHY EXTRAORDINARY
The Spasmodic or German School

Firebrands and daggers! hope hath fled!
To atoms dash the doubly dead!
My brain is fire--my heart is lead!
Her soul is flint, and what am I?
Scorch'd by her fierce, relentless eye,
Nothingness is my destiny!

Ok, today, to me it was explaining my icepick! But this nest one is even better, trust me.

LAYS OF MYSTERY,

IMAGINATION, AND HUMOR

N

Number I

THE PALACE OF HUMBUG

I Dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,

And each damp thing that creeps and crawls,

Went wobble-wobble on the walls.

Faint odours of departed cheese,

Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,

Awoke the never-ending sneeze.

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,

Strange characters of woe and fear,

The humbugs of the social sphere.

One showed a vain and noisy prig,

That shouted empty words and big

At him that nodded in a wig.

And one, a dotard grim and gray,

Who wasteth childhood's happy day,

In work more profitless than play.

Whose icy breast no pity warms,

Whose little victims sit in swarms,

And slowly sob on lower forms.

And one, a green thyme-honoured Bank,

Where flowers are growing wild and rank,

Like weeds that fringe a poised tank.

All birds of evil omen there

Flood with rich Notes the tainted air,

The witless wanderer to snare.

The fatal Notes neglected fall,

No creature heeds the treacherous call,

For all those goodly Strawn Baits Pall.

The wandering phantom broke and fled,

Straightway I saw within my head

A vision of a ghostly bed,

Where lay two worn decrepit men,

The fictions of a lawyer's pen,

Who never more might breathe again.

The serving-man of Richard Roe

Wept, inarticulate with woe:

She wept, that waited on John Doe.

"Oh rouse", I urged, "the waning sense

With tales of tangled evidence,

Of suit, demurrer, and defence."

"Vain", she replied, "such mockeries:

For morbid fancies, such as these,

No suits can suit, no plea can please."

And bending o'er that man of straw,

She cried in grief and sudden awe,

Not inapproprately, "Law!"

The well-remembered voice he knew,

He smiled, he faintly muttered "Sue!"

(Her very name was legal too.)

The night was fled, the dawn was nigh:

A hurricane went raving by,

And swept the Vision from mine eye.

Vanished that dim and ghostly bed,

(The hangings, tape; the tape was red:)

'Tis o'er, and Doe and Roe are dead!

Oh, yet my spirit inly crawls,

What time it shudderinly recalls

That horrid dream of marble halls!

Oxford, 1855

Has anyone else had weirdo dreams during migraine?????

But that's all for tonight. Time for my trusty (I hope) Toradol and bed. Heres hoping you have a wondrful, pain-free day. You, too, Ian.

Deborah