Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

The first headache I remember experiencing happened when I was about 6 years old.  I told my Mom that my head hurt and she explained to me that I had a headache.  She told me to go rest and that it should go away.  I went into the living room and stretched out on the gold velour sofa that was quite stylish back in the day.  I had headaches off and on as a I grew up.  Sometimes I would take an aspirin and lay on the sofa until I felt better.  It was tough having a headache and laying on the sofa back then...there was no remote so if I wanted to change the channel I had to drag myself off the couch and turn the dial to one of the other five channels we had.  (When my Mom wasn't around I'd watch old Three's Company reruns.  If she'd catch my sister and I watching those we'd get in trouble because they were rubbish.  If my sister or I were quick enough, one of us could jump up, run to the TV, and change the station before Mom caught us.)

When I was 15 years old I had a terrible headache that lasted a couple of days.  I was standing outside the music room at our high school with a couple of my BFFs and I was having a difficult time thinking beyond how bad my head ached.  That headache never went away and I now know it was the start of my chronic migraines.  When I say that migraine never went away, I mean I had it every minute of every day for months on end.  When it did finally go away, it would only be gone a day or two before it returned.

I would take over-the-counter pain relievers, but they never helped.  My parents knew I had headaches and together we just chalked it up to stress of academics and competitive sports.  We did not suspect I was having migraine headaches because both of my parents, my sister, and both of my grandmothers had migraine headaches on occasion.  Their migraines were accompanied by visual aura and mine were not, which is why we ruled them out.  (We now know that migraines are often not accompanied by aura.)  Beyond telling my parents that I had headaches I didn't convey to them how bad the pain was.  Since I thought I was having a headache I didn't want to be a whiner or some sort of hypochondriac and complain.  Besides, I didn't think there was anything that could be done for a headache besides taking an over-the-counter painkiller.  I just sucked it up and started living my life while simultaneously coping with a tremendous amount of pain.

If the Internet was then what it is now I'm certain I would have Googled my symptoms and found out that I was suffering from migraine headaches.  (Either that or I would have self-diagnosed myself with a brain tumor.)  But at that time the Internet wasn't a tool that we had readily available like we do now.

Fast forward through the remainder of high school and four years of college.  I was still dealing with the same chronic pain and struggling to get by.  It was a very dark time for me.  I'd scramble to get through with my daily activities of homework, work, and workouts so I could get home, crawl into my dark bedroom, and lay with my pain in silence.

During a particularly bad migraine episode I gave in to a friend's urging and he took me to the emergency room.  The doctor at the ER said if the pain went away after an injection of Imitrex that it was a surefire indication the headache was a migraine.  I was skeptical that an injection could make any headache vanish just like that.  To my astonishment, the injection worked.  Within 20 minutes I felt the sweet relief I'd been longing for over the past seven years.  My doctor sent me home and referred me to my regular physician.

I didn't go to the doctor often.  Just when I jabbed myself with a rusty piece of metal and needed a tetanus shot or a few times to get allergy medication.  I hadn't talked to the doctor about the headaches because I thought they were normal.  My regular doctor had recently left the area and was replaced by Dr. A-Hole*.  Dr. A-Hole was terribly rude and accused me of coming in just to seek narcotic pain medication.  He said that because I had not complained of the migraines to the previous doctor, (as there weren't any chart notes in my file regarding migraine pain), that I was making it up.  He then prescribed me narcotic pain relievers (WTF?  If he thought I was making it up, why did he prescribe me narcotics?)  That's not what I wanted and I never even filled the damn prescription.  He also gave me a prescription for Imitrex pills.  I did fill that prescription, but found no relief with the pills.  I went back to see Dr. A-Hole and he had me try the Imitrex nasal spray, which turned out to be ineffective.  Finally, he prescribed me the Imitrex injections.  They seemed to work, without fail, every time.  The only downside was that they were expensive.  I had to ration them out so I wouldn't break my budget.  Imitrex only stops a migraine after it starts, it does not prevent them from starting in the first place, so I still had daily migraines and would only use the Imitrex on the worst of the worst migraines.

After about a year I went back to Dr. A-Hole and requested an MRI of my neck.  Since my migraines were usually accompanied by intense neck pain I wanted to make sure that everything was alright in there.  He balked at the idea and we got into an argument about it.  He finally said he'd order an MRI, but that it was a waste of time and money.  It was like he agreed to do it out of spite so he could show me that he was right and nothing was wrong.  Fortunately, he was right, the MRI didn't show anything bad going on in my neck.  I didn't care that he was right.  I felt better knowing that my neck had been closely examined so I could at least rule it out as the cause of my pain.  I decided that working with Dr. A-Hole was not working out...I needed a doctor who was more of an advocate than an enemy.

I found a super nice doctor who was concerned about my migraine situation.  He referred me to a neurologist at my first appointment.  When I visited the neurologist he went through a lengthy panel of questions and looked over my MRI.  He diagnosed me with migraine headaches.  He said that, based on the family history of migraines, the cause was likely genetic and that I had hit the migraine jackpot in my family.  Lucky me, why couldn't I have hit a Powerball jackpot?  Why couldn't that luck follow me to Las Vegas sometime?

My kind of Jackpot!

My story doesn't end here, I'll fill you in more another day.

*Name has been changed to protect the identity of an imbecile.