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My Hero

My 10 year old daughter.....is my hero. From the tender age of 1 year, she began suffering. Daily episodes of vomiting, weight loss and diarrhea which required constant medical care and testing. Needles, IVs, numerous specialists, endoscopies, even testing for Cystic Fibrosis. We spent countless nights praying someone would figure out what our daughter was suffering from. Finally and unfortunately, at the age of 3, our daughters health began to decline. She would become violently ill roughly 5 days a week. She could not move, would shake in pain, and was unable to speak to us to tell us what was the matter. We could not even raise her head off a pillow without her vomiting.

After a month of living in this condition, and numerous hospital visits, we as her parents observed her squeezing her head and attempting to cover her head with a bowl we had given her to be sick in. We immediately called her pediatrician and told her we thought she might be having migraines. Our daughter was admitted to the hospital for an emergency MRI and we feared the worst. A pediatric neurologist was called in and confirmed what we had suspected. Our tiny daughter was suffering from severe pediatric migraines.

Through trial and error, and detailed daily headache logs we managed to determine her worst trigger which was nitrates. We changed her diet to exclude foods high in nitrates and miraculously, her health improved from being a sickly, incapacitated child suffering 6-8 hours a day, 5 days a week to roughly one episode a month.

Our daughter is now 10 years old, and with the assistance of the best pediatric neurologist ever, we have managed to have our daughter live a fairly normal childhood and have avoided conventional preventative medications. We give our daughter daily doses of vitamin D, feverfew, vitamin B1 and Magnesium. We feel blessed. To all of you who suffer, be strong, there is hope!

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This article represents the opinions, thoughts, and experiences of the author; none of this content has been paid for by any advertiser. The Migraine.com team does not recommend or endorse any products or treatments discussed herein. Learn more about how we maintain editorial integrity here.

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