The word of the day is prodrome. Have YOU ever heard it before? I sure didn't. That is, not until yesterday morning when I came to work with a migraine that'd been annoying me since Wednesday night.

Thanks to meds, the headache part of the migraine was actually not that bad. However, the light-sensitivity issue was another story. Driving here (which takes about 30 minutes) while facing the sun didn't help matters, even though I wore my usual hat-with-bill and polarized sunglasses. The symptom was so bad, that in desperation I went to the Yahoo search engine and entered MIGRAINE RELIEF LIGHT SENSITIVITY. I figured that maybe I'd find a link to a site that has suggestions for dealing with and/or alleviating the problem.

You know what the sites I found told me? That light sensitivity is a symptom of migraines. Well, DUH!!! I freakin' KNOW that! (I get cranky when I don't feel well for two days. Can you tell?)

The sites also described several symptoms, including light sensitivity and fatigue, as "prodromes" of a migraine. That's when I ventured over to dictionary.com to find out what in heck a prodrome is. If you haven't hit that link I provded earlier, it means they're symptoms that can show up in advance of the migraine. Well, THAT was useful knowledge, anyway, even if I didn't find anything that would do me any good in the "relieving light sensitivity" department. I noticed a few months ago that nearly every migraine I have is preceided by a day or two of EXTREME fatigue. I'm not talking about feeling a little bit tired or run-down, I mean "ready to fall asleep as soon as I stop moving". I started to wonder whether the one symptom was causing the other, or if it was just an advance warning sign that the other was on the way. It's nice to know that I wasn't imagining that there's a connection between the two.

I'm almost better today. Light is only annoying me a little bit.

I'm thinking that the migraine was brought on by the stress of the "they're trying to shift my workload to other people to see if I'm expendable" situation that's been going on for the past two weeks. I hasten to add that even though I can see the parts of the work that other people are doing in my stead, I STILL have got enough workload left over that I have not run out of things to do yet. Not one time in the past two weeks have I been in search of something to occupy my time. I definitely think there's more than enough workload to go around, but I'm not the one making the decision.

I'm so sick of being on the outside looking in. That's how I've felt for three years at all these temp jobs.

I think I'll have a conference with my little bobblehead committee. They're sure to nod in agreement with me, no matter what I say. I wish THEY were the ones deciding whether I stay here or not.