#12 - story time: Living in the in-between
I’m re-learning what my body can do. Again.
In August 2019 I hiked the entirety of the Baden-Powell trail in a day. 2450 m (8000 ft) of elevation gain (each meter that was gained was lost again) and 48 km (30 miles) in 15 hours. I was blown away by what my body could do without leaving me shattered the next day, and eager to try again the following year.
By December 2019, between organizational changes at my day job, and project management classes twice a week, I felt I had aged 20 years. A week off in December did nothing to scrape the surface of my exhaustion. And yet I pushed. Between January and March 2020, I took one more night class, prepared for a 4-hour professional exam, passed a citizenship test… “I’ll be able to rest in April” was my mantra when I felt my energy waning. It was the light at the end of the tunnel.
On March 16th I sat that 4-hour exam while wondering whether my family in France would make it through the pandemic alive. The following day all further exams were canceled and I -like many others- started on a heavy diet of doom-scrolling.
In the summer a friend invited me on a day hike up a snowy mountain. It was an opportunity to reconnect with the activity that was bringing me the most joy and I jumped on it. The steep slopes would have been a push at the height of my hiking fitness. After months of trail restrictions that beautiful adventure was asking too much of my body. My legs were on fire for two days and my head… I was laid out in the dark for two days while I recovered from my worst migraine yet.
The burnout had been building for 10 months and that hike revealed my charred insides. I couldn’t ignore the almost daily headaches, the brain fog, the debilitating migraines that came at triple their usual frequency. I was budgeting my medication and my sick days like precious commodities. And they were. Over a certain number of pills a month, triptans will start *causing* migraines. And despite all the medical hoops I jumped through, the only help I received was with hiding some of the symptoms, some of the time.
After ignoring my body until its whispers became screams, the best thing I could do for myself was to relearn what it needed.
By then the migraine triggers were plenty. I had to:
… go to sleep everyday at 9 pm.
… limit my screen time drastically.
… avoid bright lights.
… avoid loud environments.
… avoid strong smells.
… drink more water.
… limit exercise and take breaks whenever I was out of breath.
… lie down in the dark multiple times a day during the work week.
During the first two years of the pandemic the limitations this imposed on my social life were a good fit with the external restrictions imposed on everyone. I could go to bed by 9 pm. I could decrease the zoom meetings and avoid falling into YouTube rabbit holes. Doable challenges, ones I was relieved to make into habits.
Out of all of it, the most painful restriction was to limit my hiking. I love the feel of the soft earth beneath my shoes, the warm glow of the sun through the trees, the act of balancing on roots and rocks to avoid the ankle-deep puddles. I love pushing body until my legs burn, just to see what’s after that next turn. I love to start early in the forest and climb up to the alpine, to soak in the views and pass the crowd on my way down. Hiking is not just a hobby, it’s a mental and emotional reset button. It allows me to sink into my body, to let the anxiety seep away with the sweat. It combines exercise endorphins with my favourite activity in life, looking at nature. On the best days it leaves me grateful and full of hope. On the worst days it gives me the strength to keep hanging on. Out of all the migraines I was experiencing, exertion migraines were the worst, because they kept me away from my go-to mental health boost.
I crawled to the end of 2020. I continued jumping through medical hoops with the fading hope that some sustainable solution would come out of it. Living like this long-term was unimaginable. Until it wasn’t.
I had to be careful about every choice of activity, an exhausting process in the early stages when my brain would offer me cheesecake-factory-menu worth of options, most of which would have me unable to function for a few days. When my brain learned to only offer the activities that were less likely to trigger physical pain, the mental pain lessened. This new reality settled like sediments into my body and I could see clearly through the water again. My life was different, and maybe it was easier to accept when it coincided with big societal shifts. I learned to listen to my body more intently, to hike differently, to consider future me with every decision I made.
The hope that this was temporary faded.
Then a few months ago my neurologist suggested a preventative migraine medication that started making a difference. One that made me believe I could loosen the reins a little. Maybe I can see my friends on a week night without a two-day migraine? Maybe I can push a little harder on this hike? Maybe I can open up my life a little wider without paying it with pain and fatigue?
And this is really where I’m at. This new medication is not a miracle cure. My body did NOT like the 35-km (21-mile) hike I put it through last month (the hike itself was a lot of fun but not the week that followed). I have not given up on going to bed early and drinking lots of water. There is no going back to how things worked before. But maybe -slowly- I can learn what this new version of my body is capable of when I give it the care and attention it needs.