Your Friend in Migraine…

I have had migraines for as long as I can remember being me, starting at age four or five. Back then, when an episode closed in, first as spots in my vision, then as physical sensations that introduced me to how a body can feel remade by pain (its boundaries actually redrawn), I didn’t believe in what was happening or that it would have much to say about how I’d live my days. And that was so then; for years my body tossed the migraines out. Once I vomited and then hydrated, maybe slept a little, I was up and running again, as if nothing much had happened. 

But by the time I was thirty, there was no throwing them up or away. When 9/11 happened and there seemed no division anymore between the dread in the air around me in New York City, and the dread of the migraines which by then arrived weekly, and sometimes daily, I began seeking out neurologists and other health professionals and embarked on a life of trial and error to try to control the physical processes that result in my being refigured absolutely – the pain in my body far realer and more demanding than anything else in or around me. Far more obliterating, too, and sometimes, weirdly, liberating in the way waking from a bad dream can be. 

I have tried more medications than I care to list. More supplements, too. I have eliminated food, alcohol, cosmetics, shampoos, even people, to identify triggers. I have reintroduced things with care, especially achingly delicious things, looking for reprieve and sometimes have gotten it – a sense, however temporary, that I can eat and drink what I like, live just as I like, without consequence. 

I’ve gone to war with fluctuating hormones that could set off something that, if I wasn’t very careful, could land me in bed with the distortion of migraine for days. The affliction, for which most neurologists will admit there is no cure, “only treatment,” as they say (too often), has had, finally, far more to say about how I live my days than I could have imagined. To write this here, in fact, is not easy, to concede to the obstacle course I have lived in for so long, one that I tend to keep quiet about – because who wants to talk about pain? 

If you are like me, a migraine sufferer, whether chronic or occasional, you just might want to and I’m providing this forum, thanks to a smart and able graphic and web designer, so that we can talk, connect. I have much to share – possible remedies, if not cures, a long list of things to try, and habits of seeing and feeling to explore. 

Above all, I have my empathy and solace to give to anyone whose life has been changed by migraines or any other too frequent, too limiting afflictions. I hope eventually to post helpful things here, things I’ve tried to good and bad effect, and perhaps, if you’re game and give me the okay (and only then), I can offer things you’ve tried and may also want to share here. 

One thing is for certain, as much as we feel alone with the body's trapdoors and demanding pains, we are not. To be human is to hurt in one way or another, and there are times to surrender to this. And times to refuse to. I’m here for all that and in-between, with bells on.

If you’d like to start a conversation…