![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI'm not sure if it was the inadequate sleep last night or the way I didn't drink any caffeine until after 3pm, but by the time I left work and headed home I had a vicious, awful headache -- the kind where your head feels like it's in a vise under constant pressure. And then I shoveled my sidewalk. (We got about 3 inches of snow in Ithaca, as of 8pm. It's nice being far enough from the coast that we only get the fringes of nor'easters.)
The shoveling was not a huge amount of work, but there was one particular combination of motion-and-sound -- when I was scraping stuck snow from the pavement, rather than just lifting the easy surface bits -- that made everything a thousand times worse until I had to stop every few feet because my head hurt so badly I thought I might vomit.
Ugh.
So I took two extra-strength Tylenol and slept for an hour and a half, after which I carefully drank a caffeinated beverage with dinner instead of, say, milk or water or wine. It mostly worked. There's still a little lingering tension around my temples and forehead, but the actual pain is gone, to say nothing of the nausea.
I hate headaches. Fortunately, I find they respond well to Tylenol (aka acetaminophen -- paracetamol for Brits, I think?). For me, Tylenol is excellent for headaches and fever but has no effect on cramps or joint aches, just as ibuprofen does nothing for headaches or fever but is my lifesaver when I have bad cramps, a complaining knee, or the full-body aches associated with flu and bad colds. And aspirin reduces fevers, but I have never found it useful for any kind of pain.
Bodies are so idiosyncratic in their reactions to medicine.
The shoveling was not a huge amount of work, but there was one particular combination of motion-and-sound -- when I was scraping stuck snow from the pavement, rather than just lifting the easy surface bits -- that made everything a thousand times worse until I had to stop every few feet because my head hurt so badly I thought I might vomit.
Ugh.
So I took two extra-strength Tylenol and slept for an hour and a half, after which I carefully drank a caffeinated beverage with dinner instead of, say, milk or water or wine. It mostly worked. There's still a little lingering tension around my temples and forehead, but the actual pain is gone, to say nothing of the nausea.
I hate headaches. Fortunately, I find they respond well to Tylenol (aka acetaminophen -- paracetamol for Brits, I think?). For me, Tylenol is excellent for headaches and fever but has no effect on cramps or joint aches, just as ibuprofen does nothing for headaches or fever but is my lifesaver when I have bad cramps, a complaining knee, or the full-body aches associated with flu and bad colds. And aspirin reduces fevers, but I have never found it useful for any kind of pain.
Bodies are so idiosyncratic in their reactions to medicine.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-14 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-15 03:14 am (UTC)