So…why in the world am I starting a blog. To be honest, I’m a little baffled myself. I have a busy life already and I don’t entirely know when I’m going to find the time to do this. But I feel compelled to do this for 2 reasons.
- I need a way to stay accountable for the things I need to do that can help prevent migraines from starting.
- I haven’t really had a community of people that I can feel supported by. I want to create that for others.
Having migraines from an early age is hard. I remember having them distinctly starting in high school, but I even think I could have had a childhood form (stomachaches) as early as 5. I was lucky that my parents would believe me when I had these ’24 hour bugs’, many kids don’t have parents who trust them. I even remember my 6 year old self thinking about how there were many adults who wouldn’t believe me. Things really got bad in high school. I distinctly remember where I was when I realized I had something different from other kids. I was at my grandmother’s house and laying down in a fetal position, head stuck in between the couch cushions to block out the light while bawling. This was by far the worst pain I had ever felt and I knew it was no headache.
From then on, it was a struggle explaining my situation to others. From doctors who didn’t truly understand, to relatives and friends who never really got why I would excuse myself last minute, to feeling like I had to say I was sick vs I had a migraine to professors and even some bosses because a ‘bad headache’ wasn’t enough of an excuse.
I’m tired of people saying ‘you should really go to a doctor’ once they realize how often I get attacks. Do you think I wouldn’t love to have a doctor fix this, that I haven’t brought it up in every single visit in the past 15 years? With more than 4 million chronic migraine sufferers and 1 in 4 women who will experience a migraine in their lifetime, there is still so little known about it. There are so few specialists. I read a statistic that there are 500 certified headache specialists in the US and over 39 million sufferers and half of sufferers never get diagnosed. The fact that there is so little known about migraines and that there is little being done to change that is baffling to me.
With there being little that the medical community can offer at the moment, it’s up to me to change what I can about my life. I have many triggers, like various foods, stress, lack of sleep, lack of caffeine, and hormones. It is hard for me to advocate for myself, I want to please those around me, so I end up doing what is the easiest for others. I’m committed to changing that. I want to do this for my future community, you reading this. If I can provide even the littlest bit of hope that things can get better that’s enough for me.
More than a Migraine 