Among many other people nationwide, I am included in the group of people who say they suffer from migraines. I was diagnosed when I was in high school. I was told I had tension, cluster, chronic headaches, and migraines. Some days I literally am thinking of having a lobotomy done to my head they hurt so bad… and what do some people think? That we are making them up or taking a magic pill will help… oh just shake it off you’ll be fine if you go workout or try and forget about them. UM OK clearly you have never experienced a true migraine.
Yes there are these idiotic people that think medicine can’t cure anything, “its all in your head.” Well thank you sir … for enlightening me on a pain that I apparently imagined. Thank you so much.
This is a serious debilitating disease. Some universities are now including migraines as a disability. In fact, my university was I believe one of the first in their disability services to accept people who suffer with migraines. I had a migraine for a month straight in college… of course during exams. My teachers couldn’t understand or rather accept the fact that it was more than a headache or lack of trying to study for a test. I literally had to send the professor a picture of my prescription bottle with proof of my name and drug information saying I suffered from migraines. I couldn’t get out of bed and could barely move in my dark room, but I had to take the time to prove I wasn’t lying…. (that is another issue in itself).
People who suffer from migraines already have enough to deal with, the pain is quite enough, but the audacity for a professor, boss in work environments, and so on, to be able to say oh you’re fine you can tough it out get back to work.. is just horrible.
My own personal experience goes like this:
Starting out at a young age getting such migraines I’ve started to learn when they are coming on. I can feel it when I wake up in the morning whether or not I need to take my migraine medicine to prevent it from going to one — trying to catch it early is key.
It all started in college – I had already been hospitalized once or twice in high school for migraines but when I started getting them in college it was a different situation. When I was a sophomore i was still in classes with 200/300 others, for the basic core classes at least. All the other professors knew me well because my major was a small group. But unfortunately my professor among the other 200 students in a lecture hall had no idea what I was like as a person. So when I told her i literally couldn’t get out of bed and had a horrible migraine – they didn’t believe me. I needed all this proof within a certain period of time to make sure I didn’t fail that test.
On top of dealing with professors – friendships also suffered.
I made some of the best friends in college. But a lot of them didn’t last because of a major change and really a life change (another story in itself). Anyways, I experienced my first guilt of getting a migraine.
After saying no a few times, because I literally couldn’t move out of the dark room .. or I could have been in recovery mode (because by the way when you get a really bad migraine you don’t just get up the next day and run a marathon or go out drinking … your body has been in so much pain it’s exhausted… it needs a recovery day or two to get back in the swing of things).
This started to happen a lot and currently just started again. I feel like I’m making the pain up sometimes… i find myself bargaining my pain – like it’s not too terrible today i think i can drive 30 min for a dinner date with my girlfriend I haven’t seen in a while without passing out … ? No. not okay. I shouldn’t have to do that if a real friends knows the true pain of a migraine she or he would understand you aren’t being flaky you just literally can’t move a muscle without pain being inflicted on yourself.
Why is this so hard to understand? Sometimes well actually most of the time you need to put yourself first. No matter how harsh this lesson is to learn .. I learned it.. and this time in my life in college when I was going through a lot this being one of those situations… i learned i need to put my health before anything and anyone else. Plus you can’t be a good friend, you can’t take care of anyone else unless you are helping yourself and taking care of yourself first.
I mean what do we see when we get on a plane? A flight attendant always demonstrates the passenger has to make sure you put on your gas mask first and then help your neighbor …shouldn’t this be common sense??
Although not everyone experiences this pain of a migraine … I understand and would never wish a migraine on someone… but the people who are lucky enough to say they’ve never had one can’t understand what it’s like. I’m sorry but you can’t. You have no room to judge pain thresholds for others. It’s not fair and not right.
A true friend should stand by you and understand if you have to cancel a bunch of times, they should know you still love them and care about them but literally don’t have the energy to get up and put clothes on without feeling nauseous.
I know this is a rant and mainly venting session (I’m sure like a bunch of other posts I have wrote / will write in the future). But I don’t apologize, because if you’ve read this far you understand that seriousness of this disease. It’s real and we aren’t making it up.
Revealing Silence 