Listen to the rain.

Listen to the rain falling
Falling from the sky
Sky so cloudy and dark
Dark as a moonless night
Night of endless rain
Rain that falls to the earth
Earth drinks and listens
Listen to the rain.

I wrote this in 2004. I used to love rain. One day I'll love it again, I hope. The rain drains me. Almost the exact moment it begins raining, I feel weak and nauseated and in excruciating pain. Summer showers are not my friend.

The brain of a person with migraines fails to adapt to changes, including changes in barometric pressure. So when the pressure changes, my brain freaks out, making my eyes blurry and my stomach queasy and my head throb. It's sort of like being allergic to a cat. When you get near the cat, your body freaks out and you sneeze. Except the cat is the world and the sneeze is a debilitating headache. So maybe that's not a good analogy...

The failure to adapt to changes explanation is mainly for a person with episodic migraines. I have a constant headache, which is a little different. A recent explanation I read for this said that if the migraine brain (which cannot adapt to changes) is overloaded with stimuli to which it cannot adapt, then it stays in the freak out mode a lot and then pain becomes the norm. The brain sort of rewires itself for pain being the normal state of things even when there's no stimulus. So basically if there are lots of changes a person's brain can't adapt to, then freak out mode becomes normal mode after a while. How do you get the brain back in normal mode? Your guess is as good as mine is as good as any doctor's. In other words, nobody knows. An explanation is a step in the right direction though.