Member-only story
My Never-Ending Migraine
Finding effective treatments for migraines is its own headache
I was somewhere between my midtown Manhattan office and the subway station on Broadway when I first noticed the pain. The left side of my head felt like it was hit by a mallet — not the kind you might use in croquet, but a wood-and-iron giant hammer Thor-type thing. The pain nearly knocked me off my feet. Suddenly, the mild summer day was stifling. My dress stuck to me; my bra itched and chafed; my sandals were rubbing my heels raw. I began to see fleeting spots that I would later learn was an aura, a signal that a headache is coming.
I ditched my lunch plans and booked it back to my apartment. I lay down on my futon sofa in the living room with a huge glass of water, some tissues, Advil, Benadryl, and a rerun of Law & Order. But the pain spread, and the sensation was changing. The vocabulary to describe my symptoms would come later, when a series of neurologists would teach me the various words to describe a strain of pain: imploding, exploding, throbbing, stabbing, pulsing, and aching. I’d be introduced to the ubiquitous pain scale: a series of emoji-like faces that start out pain-free (level one) and move to contorted agony (level 10).
That’s how it started 16 years ago, and in a sense, that headache has never ended: My migraines usually last…
