I think it's the paint.
I am really starting to think that it's the paint at the high school that is causing Sebastian to keep getting migraines.
Starting the last week of November, Sebastian started a new class that he takes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
He needs to take and pass this class to earn the required English credit for graduation.
This class is the 2nd period of the day, and every time he has this class, he ends up getting a headache that ends up turning into a migraine at some point during the day or night.
He had the class Monday, had a headache for the rest of the day, and then had the explosive migraine that night at 1am.
He had that class again today, the class starts at 8:45am, and within an hour, he had a headache.
I wasn't home for most of the day, I had my doc appointment, but he sent me this email when he got to his digital design class at 11:45am.
Hey when I get home do we have any Tylenol or Advil something like that.
I got another migraine so I want to get something when I get home.
He spent almost the entire day at school with a migraine, and then I didn't even get back home from my appointment until around 3:15-3:30pm.
I felt so bad when I got home and realized that he suffered all day at school and the afternoon waiting for me to get home.
Even though we do have Tylenol at home, it's right on the shelf of my desk, neither of the teens will take it unless I give it to them or tell them to take it.
He didn't call my cell and ask if he could take some, he said that he didn't want to bother me if I was doing something important, like if I was still at my appointment or the pharmacy, or on my way home, he just didn't know so he didn't want to interrupt me.
As soon as I got home and saw his pale face lying on the couch, I knew he was in bad shape, so I passed on the Tylenol and gave him a Hydrocodone.
That migraine needed to be knocked out quickly and there's no way that Tylenol was going to do it good and fast.
I asked him a few hours ago, after giving the medicine a chance to work, questions about that particular classroom.
Questions like, was it recently painted, does the teacher wear perfume, do any girls in class wear perfume, do any of the guys wear cologne, can he smell anything harsh like paint or a chemical?
He said his teacher says that perfumes are bad for people so she doesn't ever wear any, he does not sit near any of the girls or guys in the class because he likes to sit near the back of the room away from people because it gives him a little bit of privacy so he can concentrate better, and he said that the class always has a slight smell of paint.
Aha!
He doesn't get headaches every day, only on the days he has this class, the class is at the same time every day, and the room always smells a little bit like paint.
Smells can trigger headaches and migraines, I know this because I get perfume/scent headaches, and certain perfumes and scents cause me to have an instant migraines.
The scents that cause me to have an instant and excruciating migraine are cinnamon and vanilla.
I love cinnamon rolls, I love the taste of them, but I cannot inhale the smell of them too deeply or this food that I love to eat will give me a blinding migraine from breakfast time straight on through the entire day.
At this time of year at Publix, they sell these stupid and absolutely horrid cinnamon brooms and they place them at both store entrances and at various locations throughout the store.
I can go from the dairy aisle and take a left into the deli section and get ambushed by the scent of those brooms and have an instant migraine that makes the rest of my grocery shopping an absolute nightmare.
The vanilla perfume that causes the instant migraine is Vanilla Fields
I know that perfume as soon as I get even the slightest whiff of it.
I first started getting migraines from it when I worked at Pier 1 Imports.
There were 3 (three!) girls who worked there that wore it, and a whole hell of a lot of it.
Ugh.
It would suck when all 3 of them worked on the same day, I would beg the manager to let me work in the stockroom all day because if I had to be on the sales floor with those 3 girls, I would be be curled up in 1 of the papasan chairs and crying by the end of the day.
Strong scents, perfumes, spices, and chemical scents, can causes headaches for almost anybody, but for people who are susceptible to migraines, those scents can turn a regular easy-to-kill with Tylenol headache, into a migraine that just makes you want to chop your own head off.
I really believe that it is the slight smell of paint in that 1 classroom that is causing Sebastian's migraines.
Last year he was getting migraines almost every single day.
Last year the school was being built, there was a ton of construction and painting going on every single day, so he was getting headaches and migraines almost every single day.
Sebastian has to take this class 3 days a week, he has to get this credit in order to graduate, and there is no other teacher in his grade level teaching this class, so he has to be in this classroom 3 days a week.
The school has the most absurd rules about stuff like Tylenol if I wanted to try and help him stave off the impending migraine, too.
No student can have or use any Tylenol or other OTC medication at or on any part of the school property, or face suspension with their zero tolerance policy concerning drugs.
Even if a student has a prescription and a letter from a doctor, they cannot have their pain medicine at school.
We went through this last year when he had to take a migraine medicine every 6 hours, they refused to let him take it at school, they wouldn't even dispense it to him in the school nurses office, it was this huge hassle and that's when I asked them about Tylenol and other OTC meds.
They had the same response, no medications, zero tolerance, but if I wanted to, I could appeal it at the school board, they would investigate the students need for the medication, I would have to give my written consent for them to contact the doctor and find out how much the medication was really needed to be taken.
It was basically a do or die kind of thing, like, was Sebastian's head going to explode if he couldn't take the medication at exactly every 6 hours?
Would he survive if he took 1 dose before he left home in the morning, and then didn't take the next dose until he got home?
He would survive?
Thank you doctor.
Sorry Ms. Cooper, Sebastian will not die if he can't take it at school, so our original decision holds, he will not be taking his medication at school, thank you, and now shut the fuck up.
There were quite a few days last year when I had him stick 2 Tylenol in his pocket before he left home, and I told him how to take them if he started getting a headache.
I told him that when the bell rang and everyone was changing classes in the hallway, to reach into his pocket, grasp the pills in his hand and when he got near a water fountain, start coughing really hard, cover his mouth with his hand so he doesn't spread the germies, pop the Tylenol into his mouth, and then get a drink at the fountain and keep on going to his next class.
If he continues to get these migraines every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we may just have to start doing the cough and swallow trick again.
It's absolutely pathetic that we have to do that, that any student has to do that.
I know that Mindy's son Jeff had to do that when he injured his foot and was wearing 1 of those boots, they wouldn't let him take his prescription pain meds either, so Mindy did the same as us, cough and swallow.
I hate that we have to break the rules, and I know that if he gets caught doing the cough and swallow he will be suspended for a minimum of 1 week, but knowing that he is getting horrible migraines makes me feel like I have no choice but to break the rules.
His migraine was barely starting to fade away at 9pm, but he finally felt like it was easing up enough to where he could try to sleep, so he went to bed around 9:45pm, and I went and checked on him around 10:15pm, and he was asleep, so I'm hoping that the migraine goes away completely, that he won't wake up screaming later on tonight.
I'm not tired at all, so I'll keep checking on him all night until I do feel like going to bed.
Migraines are truly the suck, both for the person who suffers from them, and for the people caring for the sufferers.
I really hate seeing him hurting so much, I hate seeing the pale and pained face, I hate hearing him cry in a barely audible whisper because even crying normally makes it hurt even more.
I wish there was a safe medication that he only needed to take once a day every day, and it would make it so that migraines never happened at all, and if they did, that it would quickly disappear.
That would be awesome, but so far the only meds sort of like that have terrible side effects, and I refuse to make him end up having chronic diarrhea, chronic dry mouth, heart palpitations, urinary problems, or any of the other multitude of side effects from those medications.
Looks like it will be the ol' cough and swallow trick 3 days a week.
