If only the docs understood

The migraine is slow in starting……………….can feel it interfering with my thoughts – making it harder to think, sometimes my scalp tightens up so much the pain can overwhelm all my thoughts, my feelings. I need to lay down, to shut out as much of the outside world as I can. Feel like there is a battle going on in my head for control…………….trying to think through quicksand while trying to fight off a strong desire to shut my brain down in order to escape an intensity of feeling I just can’t put into words.

And then I have to close my eyes – can’t fight to keep them open anymore…….can’t think straight – want to stay aware but the quicksand gets thicker and I get lost in it. I can hear the sounds around me but I can’t reach out and interact. If I try the intense feelings get stronger and becomes painful. And then I am gone. There finally comes a point when very slowly I am aware again of the outside world and the intensity of feeling abates and I can think more clearly and finally open my eyes again……………maybe 30 minutes or an hour has passed but it feels like only 5 or 10 minutes to me.

When I come back I am exhausted – feels like I have been punched in the stomach…………don’t have the energy to move…….have to slowly allow my body to recover – sometimes takes hours to feel free of it again. Besides the extreme fatigue I am overwhelmed by feelings of despair. I feel so exhausted emotionally and physically……….. impossible that I can keep doing this every day.

It is an exhausting fight. What keeps any of us going? There has to be something that each one of us looks to, or for, that gives us hope.

For me, it's knowing that there are brief periods of respite. There are in fact some periods of time, however small they are, that I do feel better.

Jewishmother, I know what you go through.

Mine start out with my eyes burning, then the back of my head starts to hurt until the left side and top is consumed in pain. Unless my meds can blunt the feeling is a long ride where I'll actually loose track of time.

When it finally eases up I feel exhausted and depressed. Sometimes I don't even have time to recover from the last episode and another one hits and it starts all over again.

Life is NOT good during these times...