What my migraine aura sometimes looks like. More often than not, it’s less visual– I get a ringing in my ears.
Listening to Episode 361: Fear of Sleep from the This American Life podcast, I realize I know what it’s like to fear falling asleep.
I first started getting migraines when I was four. Most people I’ve spoken to about them or had to provide them as an excuse to either seem very sympathetic or sorry in a fake sort of way. “I understand” or “I get migraines sometimes too.” Some people don’t really seem to know what it’s like. I’ve complained in the past about this here. I can be a bit whiny.
I don’t remember when I first had a headache, but I do remember my first migraine; at least my mom remembers it as my first migraine. I was at Disney Land and it was in the evening. Suddenly I had this headsplitting pain and intense nausea. I had eaten two churros from the churro cart just before, so you can imagine how awful it was, at Disney Land, throwing up into a trash can. It wasn’t for another ten years that I could even consider eating any cinnamon-sugared treat. We went home and I was miserable the entire way. My mom had to carry me to the car and then from the car into the house. After that, migraines became a regular aspect of my life.
I remember lots of episodes lying on the bathroom floor, writhing and crying hysterically in pain. Often the headache part would stop after throwing up, sometimes not. The doctor could only give me children’s tylenol; then when that stopped working, children’s motrin– you have to be at least 18 to take migraine medication. I’d gone through blood tests and a CATscan, but I was normal. Nothing to do but suffer through them.
When I got to high school they decreased to 1-2 times a year, but their intensity was worse. Some headaches became like nothing and I’d even skip taking pain reliever for them. By then, I was on a rotation of Aleve, Motrin, and later, Excedrin Migraine. After taking a specific one for a while, I’d have to switch to a different pain reliever as I’d develop a tolerance. Then, during my senior year of high school, I had an intense migraine, but as it was the first day back from winter break and I had tests to take and papers to turn in, I went to class anyway. The last thing I’m able to remember is turning toward our band director’s office door to go outside and get some air. I woke up in a puddle of blood on the floor while kids flooded out, stepping over me.
The pain had become so usual, so everyday that I’d learned to ignore it. I’d had many teachers who didn’t tolerate my absences from school for “just a bad headache.” But on that day, I’d actually passed out from the pain. As a result, I had hit the linoleum-covered concrete face-first, breaking my nose, busting my lip open, pushing my two front teeth back into my mouth, and sustaining a minor head injury. I was in and out of consciousness until my mother came to the nurse’s office to pick me up. I received four stitches to my lip, cotton stuffing for my nose, got an MRI to check for any damage, and was out of school for two months. I couldn’t stand up or walk on my own, read, watch TV, or go on the computer because I got vertigo. The teachers and administrators at school never bothered me about an absence or a doctor’s appointment during classtime again; they were too afraid my mother would go to the Board about their not calling an ambulance for me since it is the law that one be called if the student is unconscious. Despite all this, I couldn’t get a prescription for any migraine medication– I was 17, not 18 yet.
Some of my worst migraines occurred while I was asleep. I’d wake up suddenly in intense pain, sometimes sick to my stomach. My neurologist in New York told me that those are the hardest to treat as they become advanced when you’re sleeping, when you can’t do anything about them. It’s always hard to let yourself sleep after or during a migraine. If you fall asleep, there’s that possibility that you’ll wake up in worse pain, especially when you have a migraine that last several days, even over a week. I had been seeing my neurologist for nearly a year and had my prescription of Axert when I woke up one night in so much pain, I couldn’t even move. Then the vomiting began. Two hours later, I was hysterical from the pain and dehydrated. I couldn’t even keep water down and the Axert had done nothing. I was on the phone with my mom not knowing what to do. So I gathered all the strength I had left and called Emergency. An hour later, I was in the ER. It wasn’t until eight hours, four Imitrex injections, and an IV later that I was able to get up and go home. It was my 19th birthday morning. The next day, my neurologist gave me a steroid medication to ensure that the migraine didn’t come back.
The worst thing about it all is that you get so worn out from a migraine and the medication’s side effects that you want and need sleep, but at the same time, you don’t want to wake up to find out that the migraine’s come back and with a vengeance. Sleep can be the enemy, but lack of it can bring on a migraine. So what you can do? Just deal with it, I guess. Anyone out there get migraines? Or have a fear of sleep story?
I’m working on this compilation set of CDs for my little cousins to educated them in the ways of jazz. Entitled “Jazz for the Kids: Do You Wanna Jump, Children?” (”Do You Wanna Jump Children” is a Count Basie song), it will feature kid-friendly themed songs that will hopefully calm their tiny attention spans. The cover is this simple little sketch, but still cute, don’t you think?