You'll grow out of it....

Having migraine as a child, everyone assumed I would grow out of it. As a child, the intensity and severity of my migraines meant that I was sick a lot at school and then missed a lot of school. Thankfully, I didn't fall too behind... I remember the warning signs, the alien flashing lights descending before my eyes before darting off to play with more alien lights, and then the jelly-like clear plasma with its crooked edges wobbling as it still does in front of my right eye. Then the pain would hit my right temple and the nausea would strike. Sometimes I would throw up on the spot..., which didn't make me very popular in school or where ever I happened to be at that time.

It was a rapid chain reaction of events, which as a child I had no control over. Once a migraine set in, it was run for cover time, I had to shield myself from the evil forces in this case anything that resembled sunlight and lie in the darkness and sleep my thumping 'headache' off. There was always something silly like a small harmless alarm clock that managed to disturb the tranquillity I had created under those blankets. The clock or I had to go... About two days later, I would re-emerge out of my cocoon, dazed but alive.... and so it continued.

Migraines came and went through my teenage years and then there was a significant lull in my twenties. Finally, I thought I had grown out of it and I was so happy. Then one morning when I was 28, I was sitting at my desk; I was working out a quotation on my calculator. Some of the numbers were missing so I tapped the calculator off the desk. Tried it again, the next time different numbers were missing and when I looked at my computer half the screen was invisible.

My sight had partially gone. At the same time, my hand went numb. I answered the phone and I tried to speak and I could only say some words and started to stammer. I could visualise the words that I wanted to say. However, part of me had doubts that they were the real words. I put down the phone and walked out of my office. I couldn't speak, text, see properly or make sense of anything.. I thought I was having a stroke. To cut a long story short, I went to the doctor and went to a neurologist and was diagnosed with classical migraine or migraine with aura. So it looks like migraine doesn't have a start or and end date, it just happens and we just have to support each other the best way we can.

I am 38 now and I still haven’t grown out of it………