The Headaches

Sometimes it happens where there is a loud noise. Sometimes when I stand up abruptly. Sometimes when I'm driving and I see something that makes me panic quickly. Sometimes when I'm stressed. Sometimes it's just random and subtle.

When it's subtle, it's like a wave. A slow and short wave of light-headedness, my body feels soft, and slightly weightless. I feel a momentary sense of displacement and then I'm back and I can concentrate just fine. Sometimes it takes longer for me to get back. It's scarier when it lasts longer, because I can't concentrate on anything much more than the fact that I feel like I'm floating in my head.

I know when it's happening, so there is a change in my psyche and I've learned that it's better to stay very still when it happens.

When it's normal, I feel like I was just struck by something, my heart beat quickens, my body slows, my mind feels sluggish and my whole body feels weightless like my head is a balloon and I'm being picked up off my feet and led into the sky.

I stand very still, and I concentrate on one thing and usually I get back to being fine.

Sometimes that doesn't happen. And I get really scared.

When it's worse than normal, I feel like I'm in a dream. It's as if suddenly I'm here, functioning normally and then suddenly I don't know where I am, what I'm doing, even who I am.

Everything just spins a little in my head and I feel sick, and my eyesight starts to fade. Just a little enough that I see spots in my eyes but I'm surrounded by every day life and I have to concentrate to get normal again.

When this happens I can deal with it, everything above that I've written about, I'm able to handle. It scares me, sometimes even gets me to cry, but I can always deal with it.

Unless I'm driving the car,

Then it just sucks.

When it's the all time worse, and I mean this in the scariest way it's when I feel like I've blacked out but I'm still conscious, and still standing.

It's as if I should have fainted, I should have passed out but I haven't. I feel dizzy, disoriented, nauseous, I'm shivering, my heart is beating so quickly I can feel it pumping against my chest but the worst part is that I can't see. Anything.

It's like the oxygen doesn't reach far enough and I'm suddenly blind; black and blue spots trickle into my vision and I can't see anything around me. I curl up into a ball on the floor, I shut my eyes and I try to get back down to a level place in reality. My whole body quakes and quivers, some of it out of fear, the other part because a wash of cold breezes through my body.

After a few minutes I'm OK.

I'm able to stand, shakily back onto my feet and I'm able to see.

It's not about my diet, or how much exercise I get. I've been tested for Anemia and that isn't the answer. It's not because of dehydration or through how much sleep I'm getting.

I don't know what it is. I thought it might be because of my extra chromosome. The thing that doesn't affect me at all except for making me an abnormality with three X chromosomes. One more than I should have. But it's there. And it's been happening for as long as I can remember. When I was little it was mostly just this “funny feeling” in the pit of my stomach. When I got older, I started to have it during class and I didn't know how to handle it. I got so scared because I thought my brain was detaching from my body so I raised my hand and told my teacher I felt bad. So I just went to the nurses office and ate crackers till my Dad could pick me up. After awhile I knew I had to stop missing class because of it. So I stopped telling the teacher, and I started dealing with it. And it's been like that ever since.

So if you ever see me just standing very still, my eyes unfocused or shut tightly, and when I look as if I might fall over.

I'm ok.

I'm dealing with it.

-Ella