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Adventures in Migraines

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What I pretty much look like when I have a migraine.

What I pretty much look like when I have a migraine. Only not as glamorous. And the room is much darker.

Migraines.  What can I say about them?  They suck!  I’m lucky to have several coworkers who deal with migraines and understand my pain.  They make dealing with them at work much better.  Those are the worst days.  It’s not easy sitting in bright fluorescent lighting staring at a computer screen, talking on the phone for 8 hours.  But it’s been something that I’ve learned to deal with.  And I know at the end of the day, I can come home lay down and my husband does an excellent job of taking care of me.  But I know that can’t be forever; eventually we’ll have kids to take care of, and it won’t be an option for me to be out of commission for a day or more. So I knew I needed to do something.

As far back as I can remember, I have had headaches.  It wasn’t until I started college that I noticed my headaches progress to a much worse level.  I would get them every so often, always on the right side of my head, never really taking notice of when they occurred.  I knew I got them, but just thought it was due to poor sleeping habits in college, or stress.

For a few years I thought it was sinus headaches.  I would take Sudafed and Advil, and lay in bed.Then, it got to a point where that didn’t work anymore.  I started realizing that heat would help them a bit, so I thought maybe they were tension headaches. So, I continued the Advil, sometimes switched to Tylenol, and would heat my neck and the add a cold pack every once in a while.  I spoke with my Primary Care Physician (PCP) at the time and she gave me a couple of samples of Imatrex to try.  I honestly only remember using one of them since I didn’t think it was migraines.  And the one I took was only an emergency, and it was the middle of a hot night after my cousin’s wedding. So I thought it was just dehydration.  I didn’t have health insurance at the time (that’s a post for another day…), so I never pursued this.  Eventually, I realized that the cold packs worked well, so I just used those and Advil and just sucked it up and dealt with the pain.

About a year ago, I was talking with my new PCP.  I can’t even remember how it came up, but the topic of my headaches came up and she suggested we try something different to treat them.  I was still convinced they were tension related as I didn’t think I had many of the classic migraine symptoms.  I thought the only symptom that I fit into was that my headache was always on one side of my head.  So she gave me a prescription for a tension headache medicine to try.  She told me it wasn’t healthy to take so much of the over the counter pain meds.  I could actually be doing damage to my body and causing what are called “rebound headaches”.

So I tried that for almost a year.  But in that time, I also was much more diligent in tracking my headaches.  I would track how often I got them, what time of the month it was, and what I had eaten/done in the time before I got the headache.  I also paid attention to the actual headache symptoms I was experiencing.  What kind of pain was I having, what made the pain better, what made the pain worse.  Also during this time, I started seeing a chiropractor.  Thinking things were tension related, I thought it would help.  But yet I continued to experience the headaches.  And they weren’t getting any better.  And the medicine wasn’t helping.

So things finally came to a head, and I decided I needed to go back and see my PCP again.  I had noticed that my headaches came around my period.  I also noted that sitting in a dark room with little sound made things more tolerable.  I noticed that I felt congestion in my ear and sinuses when I had one of the headaches.  I also occasionally would get nauseous.  These are all classic migraine symptoms.  This time, my PCP decided to try me on a medication to treat them as migraines.  Also she wanted me to get a CT Scan.

Let me back up for a minute.  When I was a month old, I was diagnosed with Hydrocephalus.  I had surgery at that time to install a VP shunt that would pump the excess fluid surrounding my brain from my head to my abdomen.  At age 10, I had the tubing for the shunt extended since I had obviously grown since I was a baby.  And that’s was the last time I saw a neurologist for the issue.  They pretty much said, call us if you experience certain symptoms that fit the criteria for a malfunction.  This was almost 20 years ago.  I played sports all through high school and never had any issues.  I even played soccer and headed the ball.  I never experienced symptoms of a malfunction, but any time I got a headache, a malfunction of my shunt was always in the back of my mind.

So when my PCP suggested I get a CT Scan to check on my shunt.  I was pretty scared.  She assured me that she didn’t think anything was going on, but because my headaches always occurred on the side of my head where my shunt was, she just wanted to rule it out.  She said that if I didn’t have a shunt, she would just treat me for migraines and call it a day. My scan was scheduled for a week later.  And thankfully everything looked great.  Basically, I just have migraines, and also happen to have a shunt.  The two are seemingly unrelated.

My PCP did give me a prescription of Imatrex to try and see if that worked to manage the migraines.  I haven’t really given the meds a test yet.  I am pretty sure I had a migraine this weekend, and I took the meds just before going to bed the night before when I first started to feel what I thought was going to be a migraine.  The next day I could still feel a few of the symptoms, but the pain and the sensitivity to light weren’t there, thankfully.  I was able to enjoy going out to lunch with some amazing friends, and the migraine didn’t disrupt my whole weekend. I hope when I next get on I am able to catch it in time.  I mostly wake up with them, so hopefully taking the meds then will be enough.

I’m really happy to have an answer and a plan.  I’m lucky that I only get 1-2 migraines a month. I see the commercials on TV for people who get chronic migraines and I can’t even imagine having 15+ days a month of headaches.  It’s just awful.

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photo by: mislav-m

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