Chapter 19

Migraine:

‘Me’graine or ‘my’graine however you like to pronounce it is a curse which afflicts many of us.

If you think you might have had a migraine attack then you haven’t.

It is not to be compared with having a headache or a hangover.

I had my first attack when I was in my mid forties and at the time thought I must be having a stroke. I had been working hard in my office sitting at my computer screen. The same as every other day. When I suddenly realized I couldn’t see properly. Jagged pulsating lines of distortion were encroaching on my vision. They started by obscuring my peripheral vision and gradually closed in to leave very little clear vision left. I was scared but even more concerned when the headache hit. Within a half an hour it was of an intensity such that only by lying in my bed in a darkened room with a pillow over my head could I begin to bear it. The usual headache pills seemed to have little effect. The next day I woke up with all the visual disturbances gone, the headache turned into just a dull memory and the feeling physically that I had been run over by a steamroller.

A few years ago I had a medical check up, for my gliding licence. I was foolish enough to mention that I got the occasional migraine. I was sent to a neurological specialist.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Sixty eight” I replied.
“Then I have good news for you.” he said.
“Migraine is mostly a complaint of the middle aged. I have never ever known of a person in his seventies to still suffer from it.”

Well all I can say is that I must be making medical history, or I am incredibly young for my age. (I think I’ll go for the second of those).
Because my migraines are as bad now as they have ever been -in fact I think rather worse.

In this technologically enlightened age I am really glad to be able to report that pharmaceutical advances mean that now, whenever I get the first glimmerings of visual disturbance I take a pill.

The effect is awesome.

Within fifteen minutes all visual disturbance vanishes and, even better, the headache does not appear. It is at moments like this that I am really glad to be living in the present. (The phrase “short, nasty and brutish”, said of the past, springs to mind)

However there is one aspect which the chemists have not succeeded in preventing. I still wake up the next day feeling as though I have been run over by a steamroller, which is where I am today.

I am sitting on my bed with a sense of lethargy which exceeds my usual, well renowned, fatigue by several orders of magnitude.

I am awake but it is a very close run thing.

Look, I am not complaining. I am using my computer without jagged distortions of my vision. I am killing, with regret, the occasional ant which wanders across my screen. My brain is capable of stringing words together into meaningful sentences.(sentient sentences?). I am happy to be in a warm climate. My sense of humour is as per usual. But..

Please Mr medical magician do you think you could make an all out effort so that when you have cured the world of typhoid fever, malaria, cancer and aids then you could just lighten my personal steamroller.