Just one headache after another...

Well, I like dramatic titles. ;-)

I don't know how much I've written about this topic here, but today I felt like writing about it.

I get headaches. Actually, I get a lot of headaches. I don't remember having all that many headaches before, but since coming to Japan, they have been dramatically increasing. (mostly in the past 2 or 3 years) At first I thought they were possibly sinus headaches, since they seemed to occur more often when the weather was changing. But I went to the doctor, had lots of fun tests (fortunately there is good health insurance here, so the tests did not cost me an arm and a leg like they would have in America. Closer to a manicure and pedicure...) and it was determined I have "beautiful sinuses." Well, that's good to know. (I even got a brain scan, so I can't claim that there's something wrong in my head anymore...) So we decided I have migraines.

fun.

Let me tell you.

For a while I got some medicine, but it costs nearly 100 bucks a month (for about 14 doses) and having recently changed jobs, I haven't been able to afford it. So I've just gone back to tolerating the headaches. Usually they don't interfere with things too much. But recently they seem to be getting worse. :-( Some months I can have as few as 5 or 6, but bad months leave me with 15-17.

When I get bad headaches, they almost always come with nausea. This is good for saving money and loosing weight, but rather annoying. Recently I just pretty much feel nauseated all the time. Yuck. I was hoping it was just the summer heat, so we'll see if that goes down soon. But the headaches have started increasing in intensity too. I've had three now that, although they didn't knock me off my feet (I've had only two do that, but fortunately on days when I was able to spend all day in bed and not miss anything important) were pretty dang bad. The last one being yesterday. And they also cause me to vomit. Again, not fun.

Yesterday just wasn't a fun day at all... :-( (I had been asked to stay after school to help students with speeches, which I don't mind, but I had had a headache all day long, and it caused me to miss my bus. Which meant I had to wait an hour for the next one and got home pretty late. Riding the bicycles and the bus didn't help so much either. By the time I got home, I was just miserable, threw up and went to bed. 9 hours of sleep was nice though. :-) )

Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of these headaches. I'm (kinda) trying to find out what causes them, but there are SO many things that might cause headaches that trying to find the triggers is very difficult and time consuming. There might even be several. They can be triggered by weather, food, stress, tension, light, noise etc. Basically living causes these headaches. Haha. It's also hard trying to figure out if these headaches are spiritual in nature or not. There's a lot of spiritual warfare in Japan, and I know of a couple of people who have experienced headaches as a form of spiritual attack. But praying doesn't seem to relieve me of mine.

So, usually I'm left at square one. With another headache.

(Prayers and/or advice appreciated.)