I’ve been meaning to start this blog for awhile. Its contents have been rolling around in my head for the past six months, ever since I went to the BlogHer Wellness Day last year and was so inspired by women who took control of their health and became an advocate for others suffering the same illness. I had a conversation with a friend last week and realized that I need to stop planning and just start. So here we are.
I have had a constant migraine for the past seven and a half years. Yes, you read that right. Every minute of every day. It’s there when I go to sleep, when I wake up, and sometimes wakes me up in the middle of the night. The first year, I was a guinea pig for all kinds of medications and treatments. That year alone, I was on over 16 different medications to try to help my headache. And since my body is very sensitive to medications, I got all the side effects. Only a week in the hospital for DHE treatment managed to bring the pain down a bit. For the next five years, I learned to manage my migraine. I knew it’s triggers, I knew how to take care of it when it got bad. I was able to manage my migraine without medication (because nothing worked for me) for those five years. Then, everything changed. My migraine morphed into this monster, bringing along with the head pain horrible nausea, back and neck pain, chills and sweats, and that’s just the beginning. So I went back to the doctor. They ran tests again to make sure there was nothing “really” wrong (i.e., life-threatening tumor or something) and then started me on some new medication, which, (surprise, surprise) didn’t help. At that point, I didn’t have many options left. So, I opted for Botox treatments.
Strange as it may seem, most medications used for migraine treatment are not approved by the FDA for migraines. Most are intended for something else. I’ve been on beta blockers, medication for arthritis, multiple sclerosis, seizures, Alzheimer’s, you name it. But Botox is the one of the few (maybe the only) approved by the FDA for migraine treatment. All the same, 35 injections in your head, neck and shoulders is usually a last option. I’ve been doing the treatments for the past year, and honestly, it’s the only thing that’s helped manage the monster migraine. Even with the Botox, however, it still a constant migraine, just not as bad as before.
After living with a migraine for this long, you learn it’s not about finding a “cure”. It’s about pain management and changing your lifestyle. While I’m still figuring out this new monster migraine and how to best manage it, I’ve found that this time around talking about my migraine has actually been very therapeutic I’m at that point where I’m just frustrated and need to channel that frustration into something productive. That’s where the idea for this blog came from.
I hope that talking about my experiences here helps others, whether it’s someone who is struggling with migraines or a loved one trying to understand. It’s an invisible illness, a lonely illness, but that doesn’t mean we have to live with it alone.
#headwallslam 