Migraine and Me: If you could see me now #MHAM2018 challenge

Migraine is the 3rd most prevalent

and 7th most disabling disease in the world.

(MigraineDisease.com)

As I reported in my blog 12 Months and 14 Fibro Musings from The Pained Ink Slayer, the spring and fall seasons are two difficult times of the year for me. I live with chronic migraine all year long, but barometric pressure changes and tree and grass allergens can lead to a status migrainus attack, a migraine lasting for more than 72 hours straight. In May, a very busy month for fibromyalgia advocates, I experienced an episode lasting 14 days that required a steroid blast to stop it. And, I can't remember doing a fibromyalgia awareness interview without a migraine.

THE SHADOW OF MIGRAINE

”Hiding my migraines on the set may have been my toughest challenge as an actor. There were times when the pain from migraine headaches was so severe that I literally had to crawl across my dressing room floor. But I couldn't let anyone know. If they thought I might slow production, I figured that would end my career.”
~Morgan Fairchild

If you live with migraine, you know exactly what this is like. As a high school student, I spend many a day lying on a cot in the nursing office. As a young adult, I remember retreating to the bathroom to vomit and escape the overhead lights of the office where I was a switchboard operator, fearing every second that I would lose my job over something I could not control. I remember the look my mother's face when she came to pick me up to take me to the emergency room, where my condition called for stat IV's and lab work to check my clotting factors. Unbeknownst to me all the tiny blood vessels in my face had ruptured (my head had been over the toilet for the better part of a day). I barely had a blood pressure.  

Unless you have migraine disease, you simply cannot understand what that means. It is so much more than a bad headache. It will cause sane people to do crazy things. I can tear sheets with my teeth, rock back and forth on my hands and knees, and cry out in pain with the guttural sounds of an injured animal, sounds that even I do not recognize. I have pressed so hard on my eye sockets that it leaves bruises. I slur works like a drunk, speak in sentences that make no sense, and experience complete personality breakdown.

THE STIGMA

Despite all the evidence that migraine is real, and that it is a neurobiological disease of the brain, we still feel the stigma of migraine. I wish I could say we didn’t need migraine awareness campaigns, but we do. Few understand what we have learned in the last ten years and we need to change that.

Read more about the research and the common denominators of those of us who live with both migraine and fibromyalgia in an article I wrote for ProHealth, Fibro Playmate of the Month–The Migraine Connection.  

Life isn’t easy living with migraine, but when I share my story, I am able to emerge from the shadow of migraine. I hope you will too. #MHAM2018

Find out how YOU can get involved. JOIN THECHALLENGE at MigraineDisease.com where you will find all you need to raise awareness and stop the stigma of migraine.

In healing,

Celeste Cooper, RN / Author, Freelancer, Advocate

Think adversity?-See opportunity!

http://www.CelesteCooper.com

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Learn more about Celeste’s books here. Subscribe to posts by using the information in the upper right hand corner or use the share buttons to share with others. 

My story as a migraineur Updated 2016 by Celeste Cooper

Updated June, 2016

I have suffered with migraines for fifty years. I always lived with the hope that my migraines would ease with age as did my paternal grandmother, but quite the contrary has happened. They have become more frequent and now I have not only classic migraine, I also have cervicogenic migraine. You can read more on the chronic migraine, migraine with aura, occipital neuralgia, and some weird type of migraine that is only treatable with lidocaine up my nose.

My life has consisted of unpredictable severe and incapacitating pain, vomiting until breaking all the blood vessels in my face, accompanied by irritable bowel attacks as my body revolts against the enemy within. My blood pressure has dropped out of sight, literally. 

I have always needed accommodations. I was the kid embarrassed by having to raise my hand to go to the nurse's office, stopping by the bathroom to vomit then laying on the cot waiting until I could get home, hoping I didn't lose my lunch or my bowels on the bus. I was the young adult who had to retreat to a dark room while in college and miss classes that I should not miss. I remember my first REAL job as a young adult and working with a very kind woman, who always made sure I had a dark place to go.

No difference came with age other than the advent of Imitrex, which has made my life more bearable, though it does not work as well as it once did. I have been made to feel that I created this problem. I have lived long enough to be judged as a neurotic middle aged woman who couldn't deal with life, and I have lived knowing the statistics of having a stroke as I age into later life, because I am a migraineur.

My brain has felt ready to explode, I have prayed for a hot poker to relieve the pressure behind my right eye. If you are a migraineur reading this, you know exactly the other things I have prayed for too. I know what transitioning is. I have lost my vision; have prodromal (early symptoms) of eye lid dropping and my right eye crossing. Sometimes after vomiting, it will move to the left, that is when I know my nightmare will soon lessen. I have tried every drug known to man to prevent them; nothing works. 

I have been poked and prodded, promised miracle injections that didn't work. I have had Botox(T)  in my neck, which rendered me in so much pain I cried every day until it wore off, that was several months. (I will clarify that the Botox was to treat my cervical degeneration, not the migraine protocol.)

Yes, I have lived the migraine life. There is no other pain like it, and I have plenty of other pain conditions to boot. We all know that even after an attack leaves, we do not feel like tripping through a field of flowers as pharmaceutical ads imply—If only. We have come a long way in understanding them, but we have miles to go before we sleep.

Help change the world. Raise awareness for migraine treatment and prevention. Join a group like the AHMA, follow AmericanHeadache Society. Even if you don't have them often, you know you never want them again.

My first blog of the month is here. 

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"Adversity is only an obstacle if we fail to see opportunity."  

Learn more about what you can do to help your body function to its potential in the books you can find here on Celeste's  blog. Subscribe to posts by using the information in the upper right hand corner or use the share buttons to share with others.

All answers and blogs are based on the author's opinions and writing and are not meant to replace medical advice.