It’s been a week since the solar eclipse, which in some form occurs every 18 months. However, a total solar eclipse is only witnessed in any one particular area every 400 years. This solar eclipse’s path of visibility was over Niagra Falls, which is a four to six-hour plane ride from where I live! There was some buzz around the internet during the week previous, as there usually is with such events, which I thought was cool, but realized it was highly unlikely that it would get dark or be noticeable from where I am located.
I was born with a physical disability called Spina Bifida, which often is accompanied by a secondary condition called Hydrocephalus, which can be a stand-alone condition. Simply put, it means water in or on the brain, which is corrected by the placement of a shunt to relocate the excess of CSF (cerebral spinal fluid). Since I’ve gotten older my shunt no longer functions and it is believed that I am no longer fully dependent on it to regulate excess CSF. But, for some people with Hydrocephalus, myself included, atmospheric pressure changes are known to cause intense migraine or migraine-like headaches. For example, going from sea level to mountain level or ground level to 10,000 ft in the air on a plane, as well as a good ole thunder and lightning storm. My experience of such headaches while traveling feels more like my head doesn’t land on the ground when my body does more than it’s been overly painful, but I haven’t traveled in years! Admittedly, I do get wild headaches during thunder and lightning which isn’t at all fun. The tricky thing about headaches when you live with Hydrocephalus, is that a headache can be an indicator of a shunt blockage and turn into an emergency life-threatening situation quickly. When headaches aren’t being relieved by medications (caffeine helps/ed mine a lot) and are followed by nausea, confusion, and lack or loss of cognitive function those are cause for concern and need to be addressed quickly.
Starting the morning of the eclipse I woke up with a slight headache and knew it wasn’t going to be a good day. As the week played out, I concluded that I may have been experiencing a Hormonal Migraine, which I’ve experienced in the past but not consistently enough to pinpoint that’s what the migraine was linked to. Without a doubt, depending on how significant the pressure shift is and the severity of the thunder and lightning, I experience Hydrocephalus headaches at different levels of intensity and find relief almost immediately afterward. It’s a wild and somewhat stressful experience no matter how many times it happens. I was mostly functional on Monday, although by the evening I had a long nap. On Tuesday, I listened to a podcast in the morning, then slept for the rest of the day, but responded to some messages later in the evening. On Wednesday, I was back to functional but not feeling great so went to bed early and slept for 11 hours straight. By Thursday, I wasn’t hormonal but still experiencing a headache that was disorienting, yet not as painful. By Friday, I was pretty much pain-free and back to myself, except for feeling tired and needing to catch up on sleep.
The majority of my eclipse experience was through watching Facebook videos between periods of sleeping on Tuesday. If I’m being honest, the entire week was pretty much a blur. When the pain lifted, I began wondering if eclipses caused atmospheric pressure changes and if they might have caused me to experience the headache as intensely as I had. Trust me, I know it sounds bizarre, especially being a 6-hour plane ride away from the best view of the path of totality. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find much research on the impacts of atmospheric pressure during totality, or eclipse in general, but was able to find some information that supported the idea of atmospheric changes taking place during solar eclipse. It certainly felt like my head was crashing or pushing in on itself compared to it feeling like my head was being pulled apart, as it does during thunder and lightning. Maybe I’ll look back on this post in 18 months and discover there was something to it if my future self is experiencing another migraine. Perhaps it is something I will never know the answer to or understand as I am not likely to be here in 400 years to find out. While there’s a sense of being at peace with whatever it was, there is also a sense of being unsettled and on shaky ground. Holding both those things and knowing, with some level of certainty, that I will experience a headache of epic proportions again and the uncertainty of not knowing the impact during or after is a bizarre reality all on its own!
Powerfully Powerless 