Living with Migraines

The migraines started when I was about 12 years old. I'm 43 now, so that means for the past 31 years I've had anywhere from 2 to 3 migraines a month.

I remember the very first one. Mother told us to clear the driveway of rocks - anything bigger than our fist was to be tossed into the ditch. Unfortunately, I got in the way when my oldest brother tossed a good-sized one. It hit me on the side of the head, knocking me down.

I'm not saying he caused the migraines, not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm also not saying he hit me on purpose, although he was the typical older brother delighting in tormenting his younger siblings. But the rock did hit me, and it did trigger the first migraine.

A head injury in my past may also be playing a role in my tendency for migraines. When I was about 5-years old I fell off some playground equipment, crushing my skull and sending me in to a week-long coma. One very interesting side effect of the accident: my hair grew 6" in 3 days. Mother says you could just sit there and watch it grow. Of course, they had to shave it all off for the surgery that put my skull back together. Still, that's pretty crazy.

Anyway, regardless of the "cause" of my migraines, I get them.

I've had just about every side effect you can imagine. I get photophobia & phonophobia occasionally. I get nauseous and pass out occasionally. I don't get the aura very often, but lately my eyes loose the ability to focus when I have a migraine. Occasionally I smell things that aren't there (oddly enough, it's always hamsters I smell). Sometimes when I try to talk my words come out all garbled up, like somebody mixed up the letters in each word. I've even had a couple of what the doctor called Migraine Strokes, which thankfully were short lived and as far as I can tell did not cause any permanent damage.

There is a lot of medication out there, and I've tried just about every one of them. Some just plain don't work, some work at first but then my body adapts to where they no longer work. I get a lot of weird side effects from them as well: anything from lowing my already-too-low blood pressure to hallucinations and heightened phobias.

As for medical testing, I've had several MRIs, a PET scan, an EKG and an EEG, as well as many others that I've forgotten the names of. I've had neurological exams, psychological exams, IQ tests, the whole shebang. The one thing they all have in common is that they've turned up nothing. The joke in my family is that "They took a picture inside Ruth's head and didn't find a thing!"

What it all boils down to is this: I have migraines. There is no cure, and they don't know what causes them. They can't stop them, so I just have to find a way to live with them.