If you could invite one living person to your house for tea to explain migraine to them so they could truly understand it, who would it be?
I have a few candidates:
- My current coworkers: they know my triggers (smelly food in the contained office for example) and refuse to adapt (we get a lunch break, you know!)
- Some of the crueler doctors I’ve encountered: in particular my ER doctor from August and my former neurologist
- My former co-workers from my old law firm: Some were kind and understanding but mainly because they had relatives with migraine. The others were completely intolerant and/or confused.
As for #3, I left that job (and the legal career) in part due to migraine. There’s a few reasons I’d like to talk to the old coworkers.
- My migraines started during law school. All I wanted was to be healthier again. The final straw was in August 2011 when I was hospitalized with the most intense migraine of my life, requiring oxygen because I was going in and out of consciousness. This was clearly not “just a headache.” After that, I knew I could never go back to law.
- When I resigned, my firm wouldn’t “let” me. They asked to talk to my mother since I was “not well enough” to make such an important decision. I had to resign three times before they would “allow” it. I wish I could explain to them what my hospital experience was like while at the same time asserting myself as a capable, independent adult.
- One woman in particular commented that I just couldn’t handle the stress.
- Some of the staff sent me a get well card after I resigned, which was a kind thought, but you don’t recover from chronic pain the way you recover from a broken leg.
Who would you want to explain migraine to so that they truly understand it?
I’ve had headaches ever since I was a little kid, but I vividly remember my first migraine. I was in college, watching the Pittsburgh Steelers play in the Super Bowl. A few friends and I watched it at a fraternity house. Our “dinner” that night was typical college fare: pizza and beer. As soon as the Steelers won, all of us went running to lower campus to celebrate with the rest of our friends.
When we got there, we found students started rioting, jumping on cars, and setting things on fire. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, so I went back to my sorority suite to go to bed. I also noticed my head was hurting, but I was used to having headaches.
My sorority suite was in a residence hall located smack in the middle of all the riots. The noise outside seemed to aggravate my head even further. Suddenly I started to feel nauseous. I figured it must have been the beer I drank, but I had actually only had one beer, so that didn’t make too much sense to me.
Normally, I would sleep off a headache, but the pain was so intense, I actually was unable to fall asleep. Eventually with time, water, and some over the counter medicine, my pain went away. It wasn’t until almost a year and a half later, when my migraines got really bad in law school, that I realized what I had experience during Super Bowl 2006 was a migraine.
What was your first migraine like?
Happy Migraine Awareness Month!
This month I’ll be participating in the Migraine Awareness Month Blogging Challenge from Teri Robert and Ellen Schankenberg. I encourage all of you to participate along with me and share the links to your post on my blog too. Let’s help make migraines visible!
On Tuesday night, I had my first “real” migraine in a few weeks. I’m proud of how far I’ve come in terms of reducing stress and triggers in my life, but two triggers will always be my kryptonite: weather changes and hormones. Tuesday brought a nasty bout of thunderstorms to the Pittsburgh area, and the barometric pressure changes were out of control.
As usual, I put off taking an Imitrex until it was almost too late. While I was waiting for it to kick in, almost every little thing bugged me. I must have heated something in the microwave and taken it out with four seconds to go, because the microwave kept blinking 00:04. That somehow seemed to make my migraine worse. One of the kitchen cabinet doors came unhinged that morning and I hadn’t fixed it yet. That seemed to aggravate me too. Why do all of these seemingly innocuous things not only bother us but add to our pain when we are in the throes of a migraine attack? (Some researchers suggest clutter is painful to migraineurs during an attack!)
Once the Imitrex began to work, I knew I needed to eat something or else I’d get nauseous. I’ve never shared this before, but the first time I bite into something after I take an Imitrex is EXTREMELY painful. Does anyone else have this experience?
Thankfully, my migraine was gone, but I was left feeling like I’d been hit by a train. Oh, the joys of migraine postdrome.
How have your migraines been? Does clutter affect your migraines? Does eating post-Imitrex bother you? How is postdrome for you?
I really tested my migraine limits this weekend.
My favorite family tradition was our annual trip to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. We would spend a few days at one of the resort hotels every year riding roller coasters, enjoying the water park, spending time at the beach, and trying all of the local restaurants.
Over Memorial Day weekend, my boyfriend and I decided to go back. As a kid I loved roller coasters more than anyone I knew, and the park held great memories for me. We decided to buy the “Fast Lane” pass so that we could get on all of the rides more quickly. What I DIDN’T realize was this meant was that we’d be riding four times as many rides in a day and that the rides I had so loved as a kid would now be migraine triggers for me.
I had to stop several times to sit down and catch my breath between rides. During the first day, I secretly hoped we could just sit at the beach for the second day instead of riding even more. I didn’t think my head could take it.
But at the end of our first day, I was put to a greater test than I could have imagined. At around 9:30 pm, we found ourselves stuck 300 feet in the air at the very top of the blue coaster on the left, the Millennium Force. I have felt completely helpless many times the past few years because of migraines, but this was a totally new feeling of helplessness! I was shaking uncontrollably, partially because of fear and partially because of the cold wind. I kept using my yoga breathing to try to relax my shoulders and neck to prevent a migraine. There was some concern that we would be manually removed from our seats and taken down the 300 foot hill (I still don’t know how that would happen because there are no steps!).
Luckily, 35 minutes later we were up and moving again. I did end up going back to the park the second day, but my stamina wasn’t nearly as long. Even though I am temporarily in migraine “remission,” I guess I will need to be much more careful in the future at amusement parks, since we migraineurs are constantly living lives of prevention.
Have you been able to go to an amusement park since your migraine or chronic pain diagnosis? Do the rides affect you? Have you found ways to prevent flare ups during a day at the park?
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I’ve lost count of how many emotional breakdowns I’ve had due solely to health insurance. In the past two years, I’ve had four different insurance plans, and each new plan is worse and worse. I am so tired of not being able to buy a cheap insurance plan like the rest of the world because of migraines being a “pre-existing” condition.
Anyone else fed up? How do you deal with insurance issues (on top of your chronic pain)?
