Meg suffered at the hands

Meg suffered at the hands of a migraine yesterday. Thankfully, I’ve never been a sufferer, but I did have a broadly similar scary experience a few years ago.
I think I’ve said before that I run a few plant fair type events as a bit of a sideline. I used to get really really really stressed about them (now I just get really stressed). I ran a particularly large one (well, large if you are running it all on your own) at Parham House. It was the first morning of the event, and I had been up since 4.30am, stressing big time. I had done pretty much all the preparation I could do, but I was looking at the sky and worrying about the clouds (rain is the greatest enemy of an outdoor event). I was stood on the main entrance driveway, overseeing the car parking stewards as they set up, and directing exhibitors as they arrived.
As I stood there, worrying where the late arriving exhibitors were, worrying about the weather, worrying if any visitors would turn up AND feeling very very tired, my vision began to blur and darken. I just stopped what I was doing, stood still, and blinked a lot. But the blurring and darkening got worse, and quickly, and was coupled with a very sharp pain down my left side and a tightening of the chest – so tight I could barely breathe.
So I started thinking – “shit, what the hell’s this? can’t be a heart attack – I’m 24 for god’s sake! [at least I was at the time]”. and then…”I can’t afford to be ill, there’s only me to run this thing, if I go it goes wrong, shit shit shit shit.”
I just sat down on the grass where I was and took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes for a couple of minutes. Thankfully nobody came along at that moment, and, for once, the two-way radio was quiet for a while. After about ten minutes, I got up and carried on with the rest of the day, and the sun shone, everybody was where they should be, and 6000 visitors came through the gate.
But that did scare me. Ever since then, if I feel myself getting stressed, I convinced myself that it is not that important really, and there are more important things, like life, love and family to consider. Some people have asked me in the past how I can have such an “I don’t really care” attitude towards some things that really stress them out – well, the reason is the scare I was given that day.