Tag: migraines

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migraine life

What Happened When I Stopped Meditating and Practicing Yoga

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I would’ve been the first to tell you that yoga is boring and meditating is garbage. But, the last couple of years brought on such severe migraines I was willing to try anything – if you told me that buying a pig and rubbing its belly every day would cure me, I’d do it. So, I looked into some de-stressing methods and more ‘holistic’ things to do for migraines and I found meditation and yoga to be at the top. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for holistic medicine as a cure-all. I still take precautionary medicine to ward off migraines, but by using some of these tools in everyday life and making small changes, I could take the migraines from 15+ a month to 8 a month to 3 a month to ‘hey, I haven’t had one of those death days in a while’.

But, just like all good habits and good situations, they usually come to an end, or at least a pause. And, that’s what happened to me about a month ago. I was unemployed, I was practicing yoga every day, I was meditating before and after each practice (even if only for a few minutes) and I was getting things done. I was writing non-stop, I was cleaning the entire house, organizing and making it sparkle, I was taking on projects and crafting like an old lady. It was magical. And, then I felt lazy one day so I didn’t do my yoga. No biggie. But, then I felt lazy the next day and was busy so I skipped it, again. And, the next day was getting a bit crazy, so I said just some neck stretching. Then, I got a cold (for a day) and didn’t want to do anything. So, for over a week I barely did any yoga, zero meditation and started to eat junk food.

Now, eating at McDonald’s every once in a while isn’t going to cause your body to shut down, but eating tons of sweets and salt and all things terrible for you – even just for a week? It starts to do the body harm. You don’t need to be a doctor to know this; you can feel it. It was Christmas: the time to celebrate sweets! I shouldn’t feel guilty! So I indulged. Or, rather, overindulged. I’m not a nutritionist or a doctor, but I could feel my body rejecting my new lifestyle. I felt bloated and fat, I began to wonder why my make-up looked so terrible and if it was all the light’s fault in my bathroom …until I realized it was because I was puffy from the sodium I had been inhaling at top notch speeds.


I stopped writing, could barely get a word out, and all creativity felt like it had left me. I felt drained and exhausted and bored and restless all at once. And yet, I had no desire to do anything I once found so soothing and entertaining. I just wanted to sit and watch TV all day. Sure, there’s no harm in doing nothing but bingeing TV all day and night, it’s therapeutic after a long day, but an entire week where you do nothing all day but binge Hallmark Christmas movies and Korean shows? It doesn’t feel so good.

Finally, after over a week of nothingness, I decided to do some yoga. Because, I didn’t want to feel this gross and look puffy in every holiday picture out there. And, yes, those thoughts still jump into my brain all the time even though I’m still for body positivity. But, I could barely do anything. Happy Baby was basically just me rolling around on the ground grunting. But, the little movement my body did that night did me good. Because the next day I woke up earlier, I felt inspired.

I got to writing and planning and goal setting and I even did a yoga session. Albeit the writing was small, the planning and goal setting was quick and not as creative as it could’ve been, and the yoga session lasted about 20 minutes. But, I did it and felt great afterwards.

As I was ending my practice with a quick 30 second meditation (let’s not jump into this so hard right away), I could feel my mind wander and ideas come to me, words formed into sentences and into inspiration for stories to come. I wasn’t back to being content, I still felt restless and bored, but I could feel it bubbling up. This found-again excitement obviously didn’t just come from one and a half yoga practices and a minute of meditation. But, the calming of the mind helped quiet everything around me so I could hear that inner voice and listen to what it was trying to tell me.

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migraine life

Tracking my Near-Chronic Illness Made it Worse

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For years I just assumed I’d have to live with migraines; they were there every so often, would knock me down into bed, and would leave for a few day, maybe if I was lucky, a few weeks, giving me respite from the spirit-breaking pain. Eventually, I landed in the ER where I — finally — made an appointment with a neurologist. After running a bunch of tests, I was put on a preventative medication and told to track my migraines.

It was simple to track them in terms of pain; all I had to do was write down 0, 1, 2 every day, depending on what type of migraine I had. My notebook was filled with 1’s, too many 2’s, and only a small handful of 0’s. Upon noticing this, my neurologist upped my preventative medication (something I never actually followed through with) and gave me a prescription for vitamins.

We never talked about other ways to get rid of my migraines, like triggers or the use of healthy, good-for-you-and-your-brain foods. He threw out exercise, something I still couldn’t do properly since I was in pain nearly every day. Taking matters into my own hands, I downloaded a migraine tracking app (Migraine Buddy) and set to work finding out my triggers.

This app is extremely useful if you’ve no idea what’s going on with your body. You can track everything you did that day, from activities to things you ate, to possible triggers. You’re supposed to track every single day, everything you did, and when a migraine pops up, it can pull up your possible triggers. It even has a link to weather, giving you alerts if the barometric pressure changes in either direction.

It sounded perfect and exactly what I needed to rid myself of these monsters once and for all. Happily, I set to work trying to find triggers, cutting out everything that seemed to fall under the trigger category. Unfortunately, recording everything you do every day can get a bit obsessive. I’d start to feel better, watch as the hours grew to days, then weeks, without a migraine, only to fall once I slid back into my old routines.

I’d feel as if I had failed myself. That I failed some sort of a test. I was tracking my migraines to see what was the problem (later, I’d realize a few other triggers on my own, and the biggest one: retreating back to the habits that bothered me in the first place once I felt better, assuming I was ‘cured’ and could do whatever the hell I wanted), but I was using it as a way to feel better about myself. I would get a surge of happiness, of accomplishment, anytime I would go a week, or longer, without a migraine. I’d feel like I had made it. Of course, that wasn’t the case.

As soon as I felt that tell-tale pain come on, I’d drown in instant stress. And, of course, exacerbate the migraine, making it way worse than it could’ve been. I felt like my body had let me down, that I had let myself down for hoping too hard. Instead of celebrating the small successes and learning from each attack, I would wallow in self-pity. I’d refuse to include any small migraines that would last only a few hours as they didn’t seem to count; if they didn’t count, then my track record would still look good.

This mindset does absolutely nothing for getting better. It just stressed me out and caused me to lose sight of the whole reason I was using an app in the first place: to find my triggers and slowly get better. When I saw that notification that I had been migraine free for a whole week, it was like the finish line was in front of me. When the notification that I had been migraine free for a whole month, I could feel myself crossing that line to cheers and applause. To reset the clock felt like I had been given the gold medal only to have it ripped away for technical reasons.

After a few months of feeling too stressed about a potential migraine, thus giving myself a migraine, I called it quits. I deleted the app and just listened to my body. I packed my fridge full of nutrient-rich foods, I tried a little more exercise, I didn’t think twice if a migraine hit. Eventually, they became fewer and far in between. I can’t say, exactly, what my longest stretch has been, but I do know that I’ve been able to do more and I’m feeling so much better. Which was the point of tracking in the first place.

Once I found the triggers, it felt easier to just read my body every day, listening for clues of an impending attack, of the blah feeling that can turn into horrendous pain. Instead of feeling like I lost, I now acknowledge the migraine, and turn to my devices and foods that help rid me of it. Health is more than looking good on paper, of your track records, of your Instagram account. We all need a little reminder as to why health is important and what it really is. It’s simply feeling better.

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Life

The Silent Pain of Living with Chronic Pain

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I can’t really remember a time in my life when waking up with searing pain above my eye, or a throbbing so deep that I assume my brain will explode with the my next heartbeat wasn’t normal.

I know that I didn’t have migraines when I was a child, that they came upon me when I became a teenager, when hormones were thrown into the mix of my body, but it feels like this pain has always been there, always been on the back of my mind. And, you know what? It’s starting to wear me the fuck down.

My migraines started in high school, but were very episodic. No big deal, I could pop some Advil and away I went to school or my job. Soon, Advil wasn’t cutting it, though, and naproxen came onto the scene. I loved naproxen and it seemed like the best solution for my pain. However, it didn’t last long. I’ve had a long road of different pain relievers, all working at one time, but never really hitting the pain every time, or for the long-haul. I now know this to be normal for most everyone, but it is one of the most annoying parts of finding something that works only to find out it only works sometimes. Cue the start of fatigue of finding treatments.

Years went by and the migraines only got worse. They went from episodic to chronic, and it was normal for me to have 11-15 migraines a month. I was in pain every single weekend, when my stress let down, causing a migraine, grabbing for pain killers that only sometimes worked. I’d go to my job, feeling like absolute garbage, like my brain was going to explode, as I had already taken two sick days that month. Luckily, I never had a job where anyone counted sick days – if you were sick, then why were you at work? was the thought process.

It took one horrible migraine day where my co-worker brought me to the hospital, one nurse who asked if I took any preventatives (a preventative? I didn’t even know there were such options. I was still riding that naproxen wave), to get me to see a neurologist.

Sure, things got a little better in the migraine department, I went down to two migraine days a month with preventatives, vitamins, and cutting out alcohol and some foods. But by then, the damage had already been done. I was stressed, anxious of when my next attack would occur. I couldn’t work out, something I had loved to do. I had to stop boxing, had to stop any intense physical activity. I could barely go for walks without feeling like I’d get an attack.

I ended up feeling so nervous not to be stressed, that I was making myself stressed. I had a rigid bedtime routine, I had to sleep a specific amount of hours, I could only eat certain foods, I couldn’t have any alcohol, my stomach could barely handle pain killers as I had ripped it to shreds with uncoated naproxen throughout all those years. I worried about my job wanting to fire me (something I know had come up in a previous job, though that work-life balance was very toxic) because I had migraines. I had to quit a previous job I loved due to the stress that exacerbated my migraines.

It was only the beginning of what I would have to change in my life because of these stupid things that came and went as they pleased, wreaking absolute havoc along the way. I didn’t yet know that it would get worse, that the anxiety surrounding my chronic pain would ratchet up to new heights, that I would start to feel hopeless in ever feeling normal, again.

Recently, I went to a bachelorette weekend, armed with everything I usually do in a normal day: I had my acupressure mat, my vitamins, my ginger tea, I was going to bed later than usual, but at a still appropriate time. I brought a fan in case I got too hot in the cabin, which – thankfully – had A/C. It was a bougie place, my friends. I had three sips of wine during the fun wine tasting that was put on, knowing that if I imbibed a little more than that I could end up with a migraine. I ate cherries, having my healthy snack before bed. And yet…I still woke up with one.

The next morning, I quietly sobbed as I realized that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the weekend, that my pain was going to be there all day and not be a quick fix with any drug, that I’d probably end up with one the next day, as well. I packed up my things, trying my best not to wake anyone while I alternated between vomiting and sobbing. I wasn’t upset that I was missing out on the fun, at least, that wasn’t what was giving me these feelings of dread. It was the fact that I couldn’t do anything, anymore, without an impending attack.

I cried while my friend held me, telling her I just wanted to be normal, that I couldn’t do anything, that I couldn’t just have a day, or a night, or a weekend, where my pain was looming, waiting to attack. She told me that my body was being an asshole and had let me down. And, it was true.

My body, something I had my normal doubts about regarding how it looked (or, rather, how magazines said it should look), but still felt very comfortable in and loved. My body that got me through pregnancy and birthed my daughter, showing me just what it can really do. My body, once so strong and lean, ravaged by a neurological disorder, a silent pain that people believe to be ‘just a headache’.

My migraines may not be chronic anymore, they may be only 3-5 a month, but the silent pain is still chronic. The anxiety over wondering if I will get an attack on an airplane, again, or if I will miss out on days while I travel. If I will be able to make plans, or if I’ll have to cancel them. The plans that I have missed, both not important and very. The days that I miss in my daughter’s life because I am unable to take care of her.

The pain isn’t chronic, but the damage has been done. I no longer feel like I can do properly live my life, not how I would like to, not in any way that is considered ‘normal’ (see: waking up without pain being a normal thing). The exhaustion of trying different treatments, the money spent, with nothing truly working as well as it should, is heavy. Thinking outside the box, thinking inside the box, feeling as if it’s futile to even try.

I know I’m not alone in this feeling as there is a huge migraine community out there, and many more who suffer from some sort of debilitating disease or disorder that feel the same as I do. I know that we all need to tweak our lives so we can live them to the best of our ability, to be happy, but also so that we don’t aggravate whatever it is that is ailing us.

But, damn, this silent pain that anyone with chronic pain goes through is exhausting. Perhaps one day I won’t feel the constant pressure and anxiety coursing through my veins, and that gives me the little hope I need to just keep trying.