My Personal Black Smoke Monster

For the past thirteen years, I have suffered from migraines.  According to the National Headache Foundation, 28 million other Americans share my pain.  Remember the Black Smoke Monster from ABC's Lost?  No one knew what exactly it was, how to prevent it from attacking, or how to escape it.  Viewers were at a loss (no pun intended), and come to find out, most likely the writers were as well.  One thing of which everyone was certain was that it was evil.

I live in fear of my own personal Black Smoke Monster (BSM).  Migraines.  And I document this not to appear as a hypochondriac, or for sympathy, but in an attempt to help myself and others.  If anything below sounds familiar or you know of someone who may be able to help, please post a comment.  My migraine routine goes like this...

At some point in my day (or night), I feel a distant malaise come on...a dull ache that acts as a harbinger of future pain.  I live in fear of this moment.  I know that there is nothing I can do to prevent or treat what is coming.  Over the next several hours, the dull ache intensifies, and by the third or fourth hour, I have a full-blown migraine on my hands.

I place a garbage can nearby in case the nausea gets the best of me.  I remove all binding clothes and my contacts, exile myself to my quiet, dark room, crawl into bed and just breathe.  I take deep, restorative breaths, like the ones they teach you in yoga.  (Martial arts masters and true osteopathic physicians claim this type of brain-nourishing breathing will add ten to fifteen years to your life if practiced daily.)  Every second is spent focusing on totally and completely relaxing every muscle in my face, head, neck and shoulders.  Every.  Single.  Second.  I cherish every millisecond in which the pain is bearable, but these are few and far between.  I perform self-massage on my temples, neck and head and press on any detectable blood vessels until they ache.  

My BSM focuses only on the right side of my head.  It creeps in beneath the surface of my eye and travels down my face to my jaw and then wraps around the back of my head.  I ride an emotional roller coaster of frustration, anger, helplessness and finally defeat.  I imagine the relief I would feel if someone were to knock me unconscious.  Sometimes I pray for that to happen.  I want to disappear.  But I can't hide from this monster.

There is no epidural for this pain.

Ibuprofen, Actifed, Sudafed Sinus, Excedrin Migraine.  You name the OTC drug, I've tried it.  The only relief I get during an episode is the occasional head/neck/shoulder massage from my eternally supportive husband, or from my cold washcloth/headband invention.  And even these provide only temporary relief.  A massage is a drop in the bucket to a nineteen hour migraine.  

Fifteen to twenty-four hours later, the pain has been replaced by partial blindness and hangover-like symptoms.  I am no more useful to society or my family than when the BSM was in full-swing.  How many hours...how many days...how much LIFE have I missed out on because of my BSM?  Let's see, if I average about two days of incapacitation per migraine, twelve migraines per year for thirteen years, that is a total of 312 days.  Almost a year.  Think about it.  

My malady is complicated by the fact that I am a new mother.  Sure, I don't have to worry about calling in sick at work and I am not a part of the overwhelming high-absenteeism statistic due to migraines and I may not be contributing to the $1 trillion in work losses.  On the other hand, I can't "call in sick" from being a mom.  That being said, thank goodness for a sympathetic husband who makes time to take over when I feel like hell in a handbasket. Last night, Liam's new teeth were wreaking havoc on me while I was nursing him to sleep.  For those few minutes, the pain of nursing offset the pain of my head and I facetiously half-wondered if that is why acupuncture seems to be so affective...

And then there is the more obvious problem of breastfeeding.  I wouldn't be able to take the hard drugs like Imitrex or Treximet even if I wanted to.  Even if I stopped breastfeeding now, I would like to have two or three more children, which will equal a maximum of five years during which I would be ineligible for the hard stuff.  

I have been criticized for my "naturalist" tendencies.  I was frequently challenged when I took an interest in the Bradley method of natural childbirth, and likewise in my anti-Western medicine approach to finding a remedy for migraines.  Let me be clear.  My opinions are based on my own research and experiences.  I have not spent decades in a healthcare field and am not naive enough to think that I know all that much.  I'm not making a judgment on anyone's decision to take meds or your profession if it happens to be in a healthcare field.  To be sure, discoveries in western medicine have had miraculous consequences and helped many people.  Thank goodness for well-meaning doctors and the meds they can prescribe.  You'd better believe I was grateful for docs in my twenty-second hour of labor.

I do believe, however, that this country is highly over-medicated, and plenty of people with decades of experience and expertise agree with my naturalist approach.  In his book Spontaneous Healing, Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D. observes that "in their nature, pharmaceutical weapons are strong and toxic.  Their desired effects are too often offset by side effects, by toxicity."  He goes on to say that "over time suppressive treatments may actually strengthen disease processes instead of resolving them...Suppressive measures may drive a disease process inward toward more vital organs."  We see this in our increased resistance to antibiotics.  In fact, many infectious-disease specialists believe that antibiotics will soon become obsolete.  Many of us become dependent on these types of counteractive anti-medicines.  But what happens when we stop taking them?  Often, the disease process gathers power for renewed expression and returns full force.  I don't want to be on meds for the rest of my life only to discover that their side effects have offset the anti-migraine benefits.   

There has to be a better way.  

Dr. Weil believes, as I do, that the body has natural healing powers that if allowed to function properly, can effect miraculous recoveries.  Myriad experiences can cause the body's healing mechanism to not function properly: birth trauma, stress, past injuries, etc.  

I am on a personal quest to find the root cause of my migraines so that I can permanently eradicate them from my life.  I am currently receiving chiropractic care and am investigating the effectiveness of acupuncture for the prevention and treatment of migraines.  The research is promising.  Here's an example.  One thing is clear to me.  If natural healing and alternative treatments have proven to help people with similar symptoms over the past 2,000 years, I need to start there.   I won't even go into the cost-savings of going this route versus a lifetime of dependency on HSA-draining pharmaceuticals.  If more people sought out alternative treatments, perhaps our country would be in less of a healthcare crisis.  And a crisis it remains, no thanks to our current president.  

I've been diagnosed by everyone from military doctors and midwives to in-laws, but none have hit the nail on the head.  It's a food trigger.  It's dehydration.  It's hormones.  It's allergies.  Hey, I'm always open to new information.  Do you or someone you know suffer from migraines?  If so, how have you/they treated them?  Do you know someone who might be able to help?