Five years ago I started getting headaches that knocked me out for days. In the beginning, the headaches where the anomaly so I kept living just as I had always lived. I made plans with friends, only to cancel last minute because of a headache. It became embarrasing and I hated who I was becoming – a flake. So I stopped making plans. There came a switch where I had headaches so often, that the days I felt ok became the anomaly and I lost any form of social life.

Two years ago I experienced aphasia and blurred vision. I thought I was having a stroke. I went to the doctor who thought it was a brain bleed. It was a migraine. My sight restored to it’s normal state, I manged to form sentences again and was knocked out for three days with the worst headache I had ever experienced, only now I knew it wasn’t a headache, it was a migraine, with aura.

Over the last two years I’ve tracked and monitored them and found a handful of lovely side effects, little markers telling me that something is on the way. Stiff neck, nausea, smells, fever, dizzyspells, more sight disturbances and losing words. Sometimes it throws me a curveball and hits me with a new symptom and I add that to the list of things to look out for.

I’ve also monitored food that triggers it and I think it’s safe to say that anything with sugar, or any carbs will have me feeling like reaching for the triptanes (migraine painkillers). Extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme excitement, extreme anything, really – is a trigger. But knowing what triggers it, you can try and control it istead of letting it control you.

I’ve managed to limit my attacks to once or twice a month and feel like I am slowly regaining the power over my life. I would recommend anyone get checked and get a diagnosis should they feel like something is off. It took me three wasted years of pain and nothing and it getting a whole lot worse until I got diagnosed and I got on the road to managing it. If only I had known.

Of course, extreme pain as it often is, is a muse also for my writing.

I am losing my words
I cannot tell you the color of the sky
I don’t remember how to spell it
I am going to lose my mind

I am losing my speech
I will never wish anything unsaid
I don’t remember how to sound it
I am going to lose my head

I am losing myself
I want to know life as much as I can
I don’t remember how to live it
I am going to lose who I am