On the day I’m writing this, I’m finding that I’m having a little trouble focusing on work. There could be multiple reasons for this, what with it being a Monday. I’m caught up in weekend memories and housecleaning goals I procrastinated on and a flood of emails in my work inbox. Unfortunately, there’s another issue plaguing my productivity, and that is the always-beloved migraine.
My family suffers a lot of headaches, but I’ve found that lately, mine are constant and painful. I was actually having days not too long ago where my headaches would make me so dizzy I couldn’t stand up. Recently, I saw a specialist and received some medication to take when these headaches strike.
Medication that I, rather foolishly, forgot to bring with me to work today.
In order to combat both the Monday blues and my piercing headache, I’ve decided to take a little trip, courtesy of the great Google, through the Internet in an attempt to find some remedies for headaches. Not normal ones, though, since that would make this quite a boring article. No, we’re going to find the weird ones.
The first one I found certainly fit my expectations. A blogger swears by taking an electric toothbrush and pressing it to your temple. The vibrations will apparently soothe the headache instead of making your brain rattle around in your skull. Unfortunately, I don’t have an electric toothbrush in my purse. Surely there’s another blogger out there berating me for not following her top beauty tips and always carrying an Oral-B in my purse.
Les Brown is a New Age metaphysicist who believes in ‘pyramid power.’ He claims that wearing a cardboard pyramid will get your headache to completely disappear in 20 minutes, but I don’t have cardboard and I don’t want to look even stranger than I do to my coworkers.
Crystals are apparently supposed to help as well, and I do, in fact, have a little amethyst crystal on my desk, which is supposed to be one of the recommended healing crystals. My only issue is figuring out what I’m supposed to do with it. Do I rub it on my head or something? Just holding it isn’t doing anything. I’m sure you aren’t supposed to swallow it, since that sounds more expensive than just taking a few aspirin.
All kinds of other folk remedies exist on Internet forums, including one that insists headache sufferers ‘think of stairs.’ Apparently imagining walking up stairs works like magic, and I have to admit, my headache actually feels a little better after trying that one… but then I imagined walking down the stairs and the pain is back and even worse.
Other remedies I found through my deep search through the Internet included putting cabbage leaves on the forehead, wearing rattlesnake rattles, carrying a nut in a pocket, watching oil spread on water, applying dust from the threshold of a door to the forehead, and chewing mistletoe leaves. These seem to run the gamut from odd, to exotic (where exactly am I going to find rattlesnake rattles?), to unsanitary (I don’t want to rub dust from my doorframe on my head), to flat-out deadly (mistletoe is nicknamed the ‘kiss of death’ for a reason, after all).
Some of the remedies just seem to take up far too much time, in my opinion. A rumour in California states that someone should wear a wreath of raw potatoes on his or her head for a headache. When the headache disappears, the potatoes will turn black, but if I have to wait for the potatoes to rot, that could take up to five weeks.
One remedy insists that I put olive oil in water, and if it takes the shape of two eyes, my headache will disappear, but how long is that going to take? What if the god that makes Jesus’ face appear in toast and eyes appear in olive oil is taking a vacation? What if my head hurts too much for me to squint at water? It could take forever! That makes the treatment where I place a piece of hair under a rock and keep it a secret for seven days far more appealing. Though supposedly, since I’ve told you all, I’m not going to be healed now.
Maybe my best bet is to go buy some Tylenol and keep my fingers crossed.
