The Headache with Migraines

It’s a beautiful day and the music is good. The sound of good friends chatting excitedly is spread throughout the garden. The heat stands at that pleasant medium which invites faces to turn towards the sun but does not exhaust. Someone offers another drink and I open my mouth to enquire about the cranberry juice availability. Before I can muster two syllables, lightning strikes. I am the only one to flinch. This is swiftly followed by someone thrusting an ice pick through the back of my skull, protruding through the top corner of my right eyeball. Nobody screams. Nobody even bats an eye. I wait for the stream of blood to begin because surely I am going to die this time. This time.

And that’s when I recall the numerous other occasions that this has occurred on. My cousin’s wedding. Both of my R.S GCSE exams, my Geography A level…about half of the driving lessons I’ve ever had. Not to mention the thousands of other mundane days which are not marked by anything memorable other than the lightning strike. This is not the end. This is just a migraine. Hallelujah.

Like a curtain thrown across the sunrise, my good mood was blotted out. Energy drained from my limbs as though leeches were bleeding me dry, sucking the light out of the day. Within minutes swaths of flashing lights were spinning around my vision and sickness had set in. There was nothing left to do but retreat home and hide in bed.

When it comes to migraines I am something of a self-taught expert. I had my first taste when I was seven years old, and in the following decade they have come and gone as they pleased, my brain becoming a doormat for their electrically charged boots.

If you ask anyone who has suffered migraines, I can guarantee you the single worst thing you can respond with is: Oh yeah, I get bad headaches too.

Please exit the room immediately.

While your misguided sympathy comes from a loving place, you are swapping war stories with an amputee with only a paper cut to offer. A migraine is not a headache. Please don't think I don't recognise the pain of a headache, it can be torture, but it is not a migraine. A migraine takes an entire body out of action. I have spent days visionless, nauseous and physically drained. I don’t expect sympathy, I don't want it, to be honest, I’m sick of sympathy because frankly, that's all anyone has to offer.

Various doctors over many years have offered paracetamol, a drug that will dehydrate me (which would exacerbate the symptoms of the migraine but relieve the pain); a drug that will increase my likelihood of suffering a stroke; a drug I cannot take because the side effects were almost as debilitating as the migraine. After facing years of doctors who simply knew I was just "watching too much TV and not drinking enough", one Sunday morning my parents were finally forced to take me to A&E as my head was threatening to explode. Finally, the resident GP seemed to understand and genuinely sympathise with my plight. She gave me drugs that really seemed to work under the instruction to take whenever I got a migraine, provided that I left the designated time between pills. On my follow up appointment a different GP informed me that I should never, ever take these drugs more than three times a week or I would exponentially increase my chances of suffering a stroke.

Finally, feeling desperate and miserable, I allowed my boyfriend to force me to his chiropractor. It is a scary and intense experience having your spine and neck cracked into place like pieces of Lego. After one session, I put my complete trust in this wonderful woman who actually understood the pain that I was in and for the first time, something worked! I can't express the relief I feel after every session, knowing that my migraines have gone from several daily to around three a month.

I wish I’d tried it years before if only the doctors I’d asked hadn’t sneered at the idea and informed me of the lack of evidence supporting chiropractic medicine. I’d like to see them walk into my office, with its wall of medical degrees, and tell my miracle workers they’re not doing any good!