I get migraines I get the severe kind, and when I am lucky I get the less severe kind. Migraines are not just bad headaches they are something totally different. I have been having them since I was a child, two years or so ago I was getting them nigh constantly and I just couldn't function so I now take medication for them. Yes I believe that Jesus can heal them and I constantly go for prayer - he is healer. But I am yet to see healing. What I do know is that unless you have experienced a bad migraine it is often the case that you consider a bad headache one. It is more than that. So I feel I should share an experience of severe migraine from someone who really knows what severe migraine is like. I am a writer and it is migraine awareness week so here goes.
Severe Migraine
It strikes me unexpectedly in the middle of a moment that was ordinary. I was enjoying that moment that glorious calm of glorious Sunday afternoon. A wave of dizziness gushes through my body and suddenly I feel sick. Not the kind of sick when my less than tactful friends discuss toilet humour whilst eating chocolate cake but the real kind- the home from school, bleach inducing sick. Then the lightning strikes those bright lights that have no source or plug jaggedly across my vision. I want to sit or lie but the nausea stirs so I opt to sit on the throne and nothing happens except that gyroscope of balance I feel dizzy now the kind of dizzy no one can explain as if I am sailing on a ship without water. Then the ship's horn blasts that ringing in my ears that moment I know what is next.
As if to confirm my suspicion I can feel it in the left side the headache that isn't a headache that familiar stab of pain. Migraine. I stagger through the day trying to hold up the façade of normality. I am a strong woman I can do this I can.... until I can bear it no longer and even my phone screen is just to bright to look at. I succumb to the medication: the codeine that I know is not good for me mixed with paracetamol and the anti nausea stuff. I wonder if the tablets I am faithfully taking have toned this down but I know that it doesn't matter because I know the drill I know my pain threshold has been reached and I turn off the now too bright lights and sit until the nausea and pain would subside enough to lie down. I feel those pins and needles the ones that tell me this is a dangerous migraine course through my body either the right or left hand side I am too tired to know and in too much pain to care. It's just this hand and that hand now. I try to think because I have nothing left but thinking, but I can't not with the intermittent blaring and the lightening. I can feel him now that sumo wrestler pinning me to the chair to the bed I am not even sure what I am sitting on as I have closed my eyes and memory is for someone else. I concentrate on breathing and wondering if this time it will be over soon.
Time passes unending and unyielding to anything except this migraine.
More time just being in pain being migraine.
More and more time and the frustration kicks into the pit of my stomach
Time again more time unending pain and lights show with intermittent statistic in my ears the tingling and pins and needles.
I am stuck here - pinned as a butterfly waiting for that moment when the intensity backs off.
There is no way of knowing what time is passing finally the medication I took starts to kick in and I thank Jesus for it. I know its probably been minutes but I couldn't know more than that.
As I am able to form a thought or two I think over what I should be doing right now. Not that I can move or think without really trying or anything. the pain in my skull is unbearable and the pins and needles feel strange on my skin in my face in my body down to my leg lopsided. I wonder in the darkness if this is what a stroke feels like then if I was having a stroke would I know. My mind wanderers to the lights show behind my eyelids.
Time passes
Hours pass - days sometimes. my phone sounds too loud and I know its my life calling or my mother- where are you? and I equally know that I cannot answer it as it would require movement. The noise is louder than usual and it pierces my ear. I feel the relief when it stops.
I ride out the storm in too much pain to form any more than small and abstract notions - pre thoughts. Until it begins to subside and all I can hear is the feint hum of the fridge or the bark of a neighbours dog and it doesn't hurt. The lightening has gone and the headache settles across my head it is bearable now in that moment exhausted and relieved I fall into the open arms of sleep and wake. I still feel exhausted but hunger has over taken it and the need to find the bathroom. My alarm clock says 5 am and I calculate the hours I have been out of it. I drink a pint of water and eat a little toast wondering what I missed. I take my pills and wonder if I ate the wrong thing or if it was just one of those random ones, before going back to sleep and facing a groggy day.
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