So about 10 years ago I wake up in this intense pain. Just indescribable. My head is going to explode. I wake my wife, Dawn, and we go to the nearest hospital. They do a spinal tap, MRI, CAT Scan, blood tests, and some X-Rays. They're all clean. They ask about my family history. My mother gets Migraines. "Ah, that's probably it." They want to admit me to make sure it's not anything else but my HMO won't pay for it. I'm sent home with some Vicodin and that's the end of it for another 4 or 5 months.
Then it happens again and I'm sent to a neurologist who makes the formal diagnosis. It is Migraine. I'm put on Elavil in an attempt to stop future headaches and given more Vicodin to take for the pain.
They keep coming. First, every 4 months, then 2, then weekly, then daily. Eventually it's just one big constant headache.
Migraine is more than just head pain though. Along with a sharp stabbing pain next to my eye, I get sensitivity to light and sound, dizziness, confusion, muscle spasms, fatigue, nausea. Sometimes I'll get minor aphasia, the inability to put together sentences. I can still talk but it feels like walking under water - it just takes forever. In about half my Migraines I get Aura before the pain. Aura is a visual sensation - I see it even with my eyes closed. (Press your finger against your eye, it looks like that.) It doesn't hurt; it's actually very pretty. The dizziness is awful. I have to stop driving and when we moved into a two story house I managed to fall down the stairs a few times.
When I first got Migraines Dawn and I hadn't been married very long and shortly afterwards we had our first child, a little girl named Alex. Fortunately, we both worked at the same place. We worked out a schedule where Dawn would wake up, get ready, get Alex ready, and then wake me up at the last minute. I would get ready and then go to sleep in the car on the hour drive to the office. I'd suffer through work (mainly just clerical stuff) and then sleep in the car on the way back. When we got home I'd go back to bed and Dawn took care of Alex and the house. This went on for about a year and a half.
The pain was unbearable. As I said, my mother has Migraine. When my younger brother was born the doctor was late and my father had to deliver him. She wasn't able to get any pain medication. Comparing the pain to Migraine, she says the childbirth was a lot easier, and a lot less painful.
Every couple of weeks it would get so bad I couldn't stand it and we'd go down to the Emergency Room for some Demerol. I think during that 18 month period we went about 15 times. They'd have me tell them my pain on a scale of 1 - 10. During that time my pain was never less than a seven or eight. When it got to 9 we'd go down to the ER.
They said 10 was "the worst pain you've ever experienced". I've only ever had 4 or 5 "10s" in my life. The Vicodin did nothing; the Demerol only took the edge off. The only thing I could do was cry out to God to either take the pain away or just kill me. I really didn't care which one. I just wanted the pain to stop. I can remember openly weeping during these times, and Dawn says I would sit there banging my head against the wall.
Although I was in the worst pain of my life, something amazing happened. As I sat there and prayed I physically felt the presence of God - a hand on my back. And then the pain would lessen. Not completely, but to a point that I could handle it. I'd be okay until the next day. I'll tell you this: I believe in God, if for nothing else, because of those 4 or 5 headaches.
Let's back up just a bit. I said I didn't care if I died. During the worst of the pain that was true. During more lucid moments I was more rational. There was one moment where I considered suicide. I was not depressed. But I've tried many things to get rid of these headaches and, rationally speaking, that would definitely do the trick. So I thought it out for a night and decided to not do it. I was sure God would heal me at some point. I didn't need to give up. But I've never met a Migraine patient who hasn't had these thoughts at least once.
So we just kept trying different things. Every three months I saw my neurologist and they'd try a different set of drugs. Eventually I switched to a nuero smart enough to get me off Vicodin and that helped tremendously. It took a while, but we got it down to about one headache (attack) per week. A great improvement.
Getting rid of that last weekly attack took some work. I received tons of advice. Hypnosis, chiropractors, acupuncture, an All Orange Juice Diet! Even my church wasn't much help. Didn't I know that if I just ASKED for healing, I would be healed?
We continued to try difference things to stop the last weekly headache, but after 18 months of straight pain Dawn and I were pretty happy where we were. We went ahead and had a second child. I started my career as a software developer. My new employer wasn't thrilled when I told him I had Migraines, but the once-a-week attack was almost always on the weekend so we didn't really think it would affect him much.
I don't remember whose idea it was but about 2 years ago we tried yet another idea: bicycling. I had an old mountain bike so for a week I rode in the mornings before work. That very first weekend I noticed a decrease in pain in my weekly attack.
Skip forward to today. I'm now riding my bicycle six days a week. I still get Migraines, but each month they get farther apart. It's been over a year since I've gone to the Emergency Room and in the last six months I've only taken Vicodin once. When I saw my nuero this week he felt I was doing well enough to stop seeing him every 3 months. After 10 years of these quarterly visits I'll now just see him annually to make sure I haven't relapsed.
It's been 10 years and a very hard journey, but it's giving me faith and an undeniable belief that I wouldn't have known otherwise.
posted @ Monday, January 29, 2007 7:24 PM