Isn’t it strange how things change as you get older (not that I am old, you understand – just older; excuse me while I sob my heart out…)?

One thing that is changing is how migraines affect me.
I got my first migraine when I was 19 – I was watching some drama documentary on the Titanic with my Dad, and I told him that I had a headache but it felt different to normal. As a migraine sufferer himself, he suggested it sounded like a migraine, and suggested I made myself sick as it can help. I did – and it did!

Over the next few years I learnt that an unquenchable thirst normally meant the beginning of a migraine, and taking some paracetamol and going to sleep generally meant that I would wake up feeling ok but generally washed out.

However, over the last year or so, my migraines have changed – and not for the better…
Thirst is still the giveaway that I am going to get a migraine, but I now seem to get a fairly constant pain instead of a pulsating pain, although still generally on the left side of my head. Taking paracetamol doesn’t really work either anymore. It tends to make me sick.

Now if I go to bed with a bad migraine, I seem to wake up in the middle of the night with no change in the headache pain, and I am sick without needing to put my fingers down my throat. I don’t really tend to get aura sensations but I have started to get what I can only describe as numbness of the eye – I can’t focus and don’t seem to have control over it. Then when I wake up, I still have a bad headache. This happened to me last night, and I still have a bad head.

Add to this the fact that I cannot swallow pills – I have to have soluble medication – for crying out loud, I used to have trouble taking The Pill!

So today, I applied to find out about a clinical trial for migraines. I have not yet committed to it – I want to find out what it entails first, but I would love to be able to at least control my migraines. Hell, I’d love to be migraine free!

With the rising price of energy bills for all householders, Gordon Brown mentioned the possibility of introducing a windfall tax for these energy companies and use that money to help people who earn more on benefits than I do by working for a living…then he saw sense.

Despite the obvious problems that are already prevalent in benefits – namely, the money will never actually go the people it is meant for – and everyone is struggling so why should a minority (and it will be the benefit cheats that prosper) get help when the rest of us freeze?

There are two economic reasons to stave off this Windfall Tax.

1. If the energy companies have to fork out a load of money to the government they will just increase their prices – they are not going to shortchange the shareholders…so that smacks of the Robin Hood story – except the government would be acting like Prince John. The government would look after the crooks and their key voters and stuff the rest of us.
2. The second option for energy companies is just to move their companies out of the UK so they are not governed by UK law and thus do not pay their business taxes to the UK – then we lose a hell of a lot more money and the government will be officially screwed.

So before you all sulk and stamp your feet because Gordon isn’t introducing this tax, applaud him for actually looking at the long term for once. Them lambast him for even mentioning the possibilty of this tax before deciding on whether or not to implement it.

A story on the news today made me realise just how like America we are becoming – and so not in a good way.

A young girl was admitted to Colchester Hospital with meningitis and shock horror, she was given a yoghurt 8 days past the best before date. The father has lodged a complaint and isn’t accepting the hospital’s apologies.

Now I agree it shouldn’t happen, but the hospital gave her something else – she hadn’t eaten the yoghurt, and the father got personal apologies from the catering manager and another hospital official.

What more does the father want – oh that’s right, he thinks he deserves a big fat payout to deprive the NHS of even more money. Mistakes happen, but I think that the hospital have done a good job.

People, stop looking for a way to cash in on every little cock up – please! Maybe if you all stopped your lawsuits, the NHS would have enough money to give drugs to people who are ill and then they won’t have to struggle to find the money to go private just to get the treatment the NHS can’t afford to provide…but then I’m just sensible and am actually capable of looking at the bigger picture.

So long Vic – here’s to the good times!