Stacey Hallal
2 min readJun 13, 2021

Check In — Saturday, June 12, 2021

8/8

Forgive me, Father, for it has been five days since my last check in.

I was out for the count this week. My migraine hit a level it hasn’t hit since I started Emgality. But slowly it’s become less and less effective. I have two good weeks and two bad weeks each month. But this past week was brutal.

This migraine actually started last Friday. I bailed on hanging out with my dear friend Sara on Friday. I got through the weekend and Monday doing what I needed to do, but Tuesday and Wednesday I was down and out. Thursday, I started to feel better, but I was so exhausted from the pain of the previous days I slept almost all day long.

Yesterday, I felt good. I got to hang out with Sara, my mood was good. I’m still figuring the migraine, but it’s within a manageable pain range again.

The silver lining is that I did some research and contacted my doctor. She had me switch from Emgality to Aimovig. Emgality has only one dose but Aimovig can be given twice a month if needed — which it might be based on the way the Emgality wears off for me.

I also wrote to her again to ask for a prescription for an ambulatory medication called Frovatriptan. I haven’t had success with Triptans in the past, but this one is supposedly the best for hormonal migraines like mine. So, might as well.

The fact is, these migraines make it really hard for me to follow any of my rules. My sleep gets off track which makes me crave sugar and the cravings are doubled but just feeling awful and wanting simple comforts.

I had a good talk with my therapist about how frustrating it is. She talked to me about limited capacity — and accepting limited capacity. And just because I skipped a few days does not mean I blew anything, I just have to start again. And I was thinking, I can try to gradually increase my streaks of checking in without breaks while also giving myself guilt free breaks when I have to.

But today is Saturday and I’m back. I’m blogging. I got 10.000 steps today. I drank water, ate well, got up and am in bed on time. I’ve taken my medications and taken them on time. And I did a lot of fun and relaxing things with Jon today. We’ve been getting more settled in the house by hanging plants and art and cleaning and rearranging.

It was a lovely day.

Stacey Hallal
Stacey Hallal

Written by Stacey Hallal

Stacey is a marketing consultant, theater manager, and comedy creator in Portland, Oregon.