Wow. This has not been an ideal day for the people named Mrs. M. My mother-in-law and I both had separate bouts of feeling awful.

As it's his mom's birthday today, and his dad's birthday was on Tuesday, Mark took a half day off from work so we could go see them this afternoon. When Mark and I arrived arrived at the rehab facility, she was asleep in bed with the blanket pulled up and a cold compress on her forehead. I thought, "This can't be good." :( My father-in-law was with her, and explained that she'd gotten a bit sick from some of her pain medication.

It turns out that when she finished her morning session of physical therapy, she was in pain, so she was offered the option of one or two percocets. Having taken that particular med before without incident, she said, "Two". It turns out that two was too much for her and it threw her stomach into rebellion. So we arrived as she was sleeping off the after-effects of the dose. I have a feeling that the digestive upset was a blessing in disguise, though, if it jettisoned at least some of the excess medication. The less of the darn stuff went into her system, the sooner it would wear off and the symptoms would clear up.

We left at about 4:30, to try and drive home while it was still a bit light out (as the weather in the Philly area is miserable -- foggy and rainy). She was more alert by the time we left, chatting with us and taking a couple of phone calls.

What I didn't let Mark know until after we'd left the room was that I was having a migraine. I'd been having one all day, and I was darned if I was going to let it stop me from going on this visit. I've gone to work and done other things in the past, migraine or not, so I wasn't about to miss my mother-in-law's birthday over a migraine.

Well. The migraine escalated like I've never experienced before during the drive home. We had to pull over because I was carsick -- that's not particularly unusual. One of my criteria for differentiating a migraine from an ordinary headache is nausea. Another of my migraine ID symptoms is light sensitivity, which was also present this time around. But after we resumed driving home, some additional symptoms appeared that I have never, NEVER had before. It wasn't just that the pain was severe in all four quadrants (left and right, front and back). On a scale of 1-10, this would have been about an 18. But did you know that numbness in the extremities can be part of a migraine? I didn't know that. I know it now, having looked it up online as soon as I got home. I had numbness and tingling in both legs from the knees down, and in my right hand.

The other symptom I had was more of a mercy than anything. I think I blacked out. All I know is that when I closed my eyes shortly after we pulled onto Roosevelt Blvd., I was in blinding pain. When I opened my eyes again, I was astonished to find that we were on the Schuylkill Expressway near 30th Street and my headache was much less than it had been. The numbness was also gone.

But I feel like death warmed over. It's bad enough that I'm missing the Phantoms home game tonight -- you KNOW I'm deathly ill if I stay home when there's a game. I'm watching the game online, so I'll hit SEND on this post.