headaches and toothaches

I am at a place where I am trying to capture pieces of my life and store them away for future stories, either as major themes or minor plot elements.  Today I was trying to catalog things associated with pain.

I got a migraine during school today.  I know, it sucks.  I don’t get the monster migraines with the haloed vision and such, but they aren’t pleasant.  They make me want to pull my face off my skull and scrape the inside of my skull as if the pain is some barnacle clinging inside.  Loud noises make me want to weep like a baby.  My balance is off; I’m dizzy; my gag reflex works overtime at the mere thought of swallowing anything, even my migraine medicine.  I feel claustrophobic in even the most open spaces, like there’s a low shelf I can’t quite see right in front of my forehead, waiting to bump me and increase my agony.  The uses in a story are endless, be it for someone with a hangover or something else.

As for the dentist, it didn’t really hurt.  Novocaine is good for that.  There was a moment when I felt something pain-like, almost a cold itch where the anesthetic was wearing off.  That could be descriptively useful, too.

More interesting, though, is my tendency to fall asleep in the dentist chair.  There’s something about the angle of decline, head being a tad lower than my feet, blood rushing into the brain combined with the numbness around the nose.  It’s soothing in an alien-abduction kind of way.  I like the parallel, actually, though I hate alien abduction stories as a rule.  Surely there will be other uses for it.

What’s the point to all this?  Nothing, really.  Just a sample of the experiences I am stockpiling.  I am, however, curious whether this sleepy-at-the-dentist thing is common or if I’m just weird.  I also want to try out the polling feature on my blog.  So please, let me know how you handle the chair.