To My Oregonian Friends

“…And she was prone to barometric migraines. Under a constantly cloudy Oregon winter sky, she could feel the atmospheric pressure shift inside her head.”
-p. 204, The Stud Book by Monica Drake

Often, Oregonian friends ask me to come back to my home state from southern Louisiana, where the weather isn’t so mutable, isn’t prone to drastic disruptions, allowing my extreme migraine condition (which includes occasional grand mal & temporal lobe seizures) to relax its vise grip.

Besides my not being able to move at this time due to my restrictive disabilities, western Oregon is the place where it all began & IS very perpetual in its gloom. That’s why a classic study on depression during winter was done in Eugene. I find “gloom’s dimness” hurts my worsening eyes, brings out further problems, as I react uncomfortable if not debilitating to such weather patterns.

Also, common in the Oregon west of the Cascade Mountains is fog. Fog confuses mosquitoes sensory systems causing them to crash. I find it overwhelms my mind, too, sometimes drawing out temporal lobe seizures.

So to all the kind friends that want me close, want me back on the West Coast, I am very afraid of what Monica Drake wrote – fearing trading one climate’s abrasive reactions for another.

Why can’t things be simple?

(Art © 2013 by j. m. Scoville)