Lightning Struck: My First Thunderclap Headache
I cannot say I remember my first migraine, partly because I didn't know how to identify them. But I sure remember when the dam burst and migraines became a way of life. I used to drink an awful lot (one reason it was difficult to identify my first migraine), but on one particular night, my drinking led me to an automobile crash where I woke up upside-down at the bottom of a 30-foot drainage ditch. I had a crack in my skull and multiple stitches, along with a cervical collar, for weeks of recovery.
That's the backstory.
Afterward, I had headaches, but they were blamed on the head injury, but my neck still hurt all the time. A pain specialist was going to perform a nerve block to see if that helped.
My first attack started with excruciating head pain
When I woke from that procedure, I was screaming in pain, "What happened? What did you do to me?" My head felt like I had been hit with a baseball bat or worse! It took them two shots of morphine to bring the pain down to a manageable level. Two days after being released, I was walking through a Walmart, minding my own business, and completely out of nowhere. WHAM!!! Someone clubbed me upside my head so hard it literally knocked me off my feet!! Except there was no one there. No person actually touched me. I was sitting on the floor in Walmart, holding my head, and there was no one around. The pain inside my head was still excruciating, but I managed to get to my feet, go to my car, and take a hydrocodone pill I had been prescribed for the pain in my neck. Eventually, it subsided to "just a severe headache," and I could drive home.
And it kept happening
There were several reoccurrences of this event over the next 2 weeks. Finally, after a trip to the ER, someone did a spinal tap and determined my headaches were "thunderclap headaches." They were caused by an imbalance of fluid in my spinal system/cranial cavity.
Learning to distinguish the different headache types
I then began my "formal education" on the variety of headaches and how to tell what was what.
Since that day, I have identified when I get just a sinus headache, a tension headache, a medication overuse headache, a thunderclap headache, or an "ordinary migraine."
I never wanted to be a connoisseur of headaches, and yet here I am.
What I've learned about my migraine
I know for migraines, my triggers are noise (like screeching children in stores) or alarms (high-pitched beeping from most anything), strobe lights or flashing lights, overly strong odors whether pleasant or not (cooking or chemical), changes in the weather (barometric pressure, rain, severe heat or cold), reading too long or staring at a computer screen.
I always keep at least one pair of sunglasses, earplugs, a sleep mask, and a small canister of pain medication attached to my keychain, containing topiramate, bupropion, and hydrocodone.
I am more acutely aware of ways to exit any environment, looking for places of refuge (a safe room where I could lie down with no lights or sound), my car, or someone I can call for rescue. Then, of course, if absolutely necessary, there's 911 or go to the ER. I haven't had to call 911 yet (though I should have with the first thunderclap headache), and I have been able to keep trips to the ER to a minimum.
You're not alone
I sincerely hope that no one reading this has had the same experience, but if you have, at least you can know that there's at least one survivor out here, so don't give up.
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