Experiencing Migraine

Have you ever wondered what it's like to live with a migraine?

I've had headaches since age 16 and migraines since age 18. Tyler began having migraines when he was 10 or 11. In my twenties, when my sister-in-law had known me about five years, she said she couldn't imagine what my life was like. She said she very rarely got a headache, but she knew when she did, that the very worst headache she ever got was far less than the mildest headache I got.

This morning I woke up with a killer. I established a relationship with an internist in Youngstown yesterday, a lovely young woman who is from Youngstown and returned here to practice medicine. (Ironically, she's also a musician, having played piano and clarinet. She said throughout her education she wondered whether to be a musician or a doctor, that's how good she is.)

Tyler had started a new medication six months ago for his migraines and had been telling me how much it had helped him. I asked my new doctor if I was a candidate for this medication and she quickly agreed, but said I needed to reduce my daily doses of Excedrin. (I take from one to eight Extra Strength Excedrin every day.) So yesterday I had only one large glass of iced tea, no hot tea, and no Excedrin. Last night I took the first Topomax. This morning my head was held inside an enormous vise grip, being squeezed, feeling like the top would explode. When one takes so much caffeine on a regular basis, a day without caffeine or with greatly reduced caffeine can produce a headache.

As I laid in bed, getting up the strength to reach for my laptop to tell my boss I couldn't come in today, I thought about how to describe the headache. With a migraine, every minute lasts an hour. The pain is so intense that I pull on my hair, twist my hair, yank my hair, trying to relieve the pain—trying to provide input to the pain receptors that is greater than the pain of the migraine. I look for a place to lay my head that will minimize the pain. The left? The right? Flat? Elevated? There seems to be no position that will take my mind off the pain. And then there's the nausea. I'm so sick to my stomach. I slowly, carefully walk to the kitchen, every step making my head pound even more. I bend over to get the crackers from the bottom drawer, and am sure my head will explode before I can stand up again. I argue with myself about which will feel better on the back of my neck, an ice pack or a heat pack. I opt for ice and load the ice bag with cubes. Then I carefully navigate back up to my room, trying to glide like a ballerina or an ice skater to minimize the pounding.

I look at the clock and only five or ten minutes have passed, although it seems like two hours. I can't imagine how I'm going to live through fourteen more hours of this pain before bedtime. Audio books or books don't help; the pain makes me unable to concentrate. Maybe mindless television or an old beloved movie. I sent work home last night. Can I concentrate enough to convert two Word files into PDFs?

Finally, blissfully, I'm exhausted from trying to find a way to relax amidst the pain and I fall asleep for two hours. When I wake, the pain is only slightly diminished. It feels like a tight headband. But now I've got a butcher knife sticking in the back of my neck and the nausea is still there. And it's only 10:00 a.m.

. . .

So if you've ever heard a colleague say, "I've got a migraine" and thought, "Yeah, right - a headache - big deal", I urge you to think twice and conjure up some compassion. It's no romp in the grass. And I didn't even mention the visual aura—the half-hour period when I lose my vision. When it first happened to me at 18, I thought I was going blind. I was scared to death. Now, forty years later, it still happens and reminds me that there are parts of my life over which I have no control.

Now let's talk about Topamax for a moment. I didn't ask the pharmacist the price when I handed in the prescription yesterday. When I drove up to the Walgreen's window last night and the gal said "That will be $50", I thought maybe I misheard. I repeated "$50?" She said, "Your insurance paid $255." Um, that's $305 for 60 tablets that it cost Ortho-McNeil how much to manufacture? And they've still got the patents locked down so there are no generics. Well, now I understand why I see so many ads for this med. A) they're making a boatload of money on it, so they can afford to take out full page ads in magazines and commercials on television; and B) they want more headache sufferers to pay the big bucks to use this med. Man, I wish I had a stream of income like that!

But if it works to alleviate my headaches, then all is forgiven! I'll let you know!