ANATOMY OF MY MIGRAINES

When I first started getting migraines they were very predictable. I would only get them once a year or once every two years. I would start out be having trouble with my vision. It would appear as if there were wavy lines that looked like heat waves in front of my vision. This would last approximately 45 minutes. During this time I would not experience any pain. After my vision cleared, the headache would begin. It would build slowly until it was really painful. I'm not sure if it hurt more on one side than the other because it was so painful I could not tell. Not long after the headache pain peaked I would feel nauseous. Nine times out of ten I would throw up. It was one of those things that I wouldn't want to do because the violence of it would initially make me feel worse but then when I was done I felt just a bit of relief.

I would have an extreme sensitivity to light so as soon as I knew a headache was coming I would get blankets to cover my windows. I would also be sensitive to sound so I would have the family walk on eggshells throughout the house. I swear I could hear every footstep even when they quietly walked across the floor downstairs. My skin also seemed to be sensitive. It would feel as if it had been rubbed raw. I would get into the loosest pajamas I could find. Laying my head on the pillow, it felt as if someone was pushing it down really hard.

I would carefully roll around for awhile trying to find the least painful position. Then I would pray that I would fall asleep. This would usually take at least an hour. I would sleep between two and four hours and wake up with a migraine hangover. You know, like a Mack truck hit you! I would still be happy though. Feeling like that was so much better than that god awful pain.

For me the entire migraine experience is surreal. In recent years as I've gotten more and more migraines the weirdness has just increased. Actually the weirdness has become more of a problem for me than the pain.

In 2006 my migraines started coming every three weeks with the onset of my periods. Since they had been so infrequent before this was alarming to me. I know I wouldn't get much sympathy from people who get migraines every day but for me it was a big problem. Initially they had most of the same characteristics of my previous migraines. The only thing that was different was that the visual aura now was a circular pattern of back and forth lines. It now had colors to it. It would start out really small and slowly expand until it was just a waviness on the edge of my vision. It would be gone in about 20 minutes. Over the next couple of years the rest of the characteristics also changed .

After awhile the migraines did not seem to be totally related to my periods. They would mostly come in bunches where I would have a rough two weeks or so. I've been told by my neurologist that migraines with aura tend to be this way. When I'm have an episode like this, I say I'm in migraine mode. I began to feel weird at all times during my migraine episodes, even on the days that I didn't get a headache. All sorts of weird things began to happen. I began to have funny visual changes. My mental capacity dramatically declined. At the peak of my problems I was in bed for a week with one or two migraines everyday. I was in such a fog that it was as if I had taken some sort of drug and was having a bad trip. Eventually some of these things were happening to me all the time, even when I wasn't in migraine mode. It was depressing to me that this was what my life had become. I was no longer the same person I had always been. It consumed my life.

Eventually, I discovered that most of the time I would not get the horrible pain after my aura. This may seem like a blessing to some but the fact that I had so many other problems that were affecting my everyday functioning it didn't really matter. If I didn't have enough brain to carry on with life, it didn't matter that I wasn't feeling pain.

When it got to this point I realized that my current doctor was not making me well. I decided to switch endocrinologists (I was being treated for under active thyroid and thought the migraines were related to that) and I also went to a headache center and saw a neurologist. It seems as if I am finally on the mend after so many years of getting worse and worse. I am still feeling leery that this is actually a new beginning for me. I live my life feeling as if any moment I could be thrown back under the bus. Am I really getting better? Only time will tell.