Migraines make cancer seem like a piece of cake.

At least the bloody cancer goes away, so far, my migraines haven't. I've always suffered from migraines. Living in Los Angeles, you're constantly surrounded by smog. When I was a child, we would have stag 1-3 smog alerts, and my brother would have to stay inside because of his asthma and I for migraines. When my uncle would come over and light up a cigarette I would begin vomiting and not know why.

When people wore strong perfume, the throbbing would start and, again, I didn’t know why. My family wrote me off as being “weak” or trying to gain attention (middle kids like Jan Brady are always trying to do that). I would tell them, "yea, I love vomiting all over the place to get attention, wait for my second act, it will be a hoot!" These episodes occurred from ages 5-8. They began to taper off until that hellish time called puberty. Not only did I have the hell of junior high school to deal with, boys, changing classes, a new campus, but in addition hormonal hell, I got to throw in pms-migraines. I was able to get these under control with that glorious drug called Midol, every girl’s savior. But in my 40’s, I tried weaning myself off of Wellbutrin XL (I curse the day I ever went on this drug). I thought I was going slowly, taking about 2-3 months to slowly stop, but by that third month, bam!, the worst migraine I have ever had began. Every night beginning around 4 pm, they’d strike: blinding pain and endless vomiting. It took 4 doctors to realize that I was not pregnant (they gave me a pregnancy test), tumor (they gave me an MRI), sinus infection (they sent me to a specialist), allergies (I think you can figure this one out). The 5^th doc was a neurologist, he asked me 5 minutes worth of questions and said you suffer from migraines, take these (Celexa, Wellbutrin, and Verapamil) and they’ll go away; and for awhile they did.

Now they are back worse than ever, ironically, when I should have been my happiest, I passed my 5 year mark as a breast cancer survivor and I was able to stop my Tamoxifen (a hormone suppressor), and my brain feels like it is in a vice. Back came my hormones, back came my migraines. My triggers: smells, food, light, even the slightest bump on my head leaves me reeling. I might be cancer free, but every day, every minute I hate my brain, I hate my life, I hate the pain, but worst of all I hate what these bloody things are doing to my job, my dogs and my very patient and loving husband.