So, in September 2012, when I was Upper sixth, I went on a trip to Liverpool and fell ill on the second day. I still don’t understand what exactly happened but, we were waiting in the dinner queue and I felt like I was going to faint so I headed back to the flat and got some toast and was looked after. The next day I felt like I’d woken up from a migraine but yet I’d had no pain at all. I felt horribly nauseas and dizzy for the next few days and the same when I returned home to Belfast. So I went to the doctor and they couldn’t work it out. So I continued being dizzy constantly and then the migraines started. Every single day for months I had a searing headache and was so dizzy I could barely walk around school and did have to stay in bed on occasion. Sometimes having to spend three or four days in bed before I could actually get up.
In around March 2012, I finally began a course of tablets which seemed to work, I’d tried a few but nothing was easing the pain or dizziness. The tablets I was put on worked for a while and then the dosage was upped, then upped again after another few weeks. A couple of months later I still had a headache so I was started on another tablet to decrease the headaches caused by the first tablets. I was still getting headaches, although less frequent they were still there and still causing a major discomfort, so in November 2013 I got a brain scan, after many appointments and a lot of waiting. It showed nothing. So again I still had no answer as to what was causing the pain. I had new glasses and extra tablets for use in the event of a ‘migraine attack’.
Eventually, sometime last year I was diagnosed with chronic migraines, which many people may think is just a lousy headache sometimes but it’s honestly not, ‘The International Headache Society defines chronic migraine as more than fifteen headache days per month over a three month period of which more than eight are migrainous, in the absence of medication over use’. Doesn’t sound great does it.
http://www.migrainetrust.org/chronic-migraine I’m not going bore anyone with too much medical talk but if you wish to understand the condition better this is a good link to use.
But as the medication alone did not comfortably remove all of the migraine or headache pain I was having I had to seek other forms of relief. I got an allergy test done which told me that eating gluten and potatoes among other foods, could be causing the pain. So I tried going totally gluten free, but was miserable. Completely distraught at the lack of nutrition and taste, although this is because I hate cooking and have a lot of fruits and vegetables that I was supposed to avoid so I was buying the gluten free supplements instead of cooking nutritious food without gluten, so kudos to all the celiacs out there who actually do it!
I did this for a while, then gradually introduced ‘normal foods’ back into my diet, bad idea because I saw what I was doing, although I still was mostly gluten free I couldn’t stick to it that well. I have recently abandoned the whole thing because all of the gf food is too calorific and is causing me to gain much more weight than I should be, so I’m trying to just eat healthier and less high gluten foods than I would have before, having had bagels, cous cous and pasta as my main diet for a long time. So I have been mostly migraine free for a few months, only suffering from two or three a month, which is pretty good, but as I’m now going to change my diet back I’m scared I’ll be back in bed a lot, but I shall wait and see!
Just needed to get this all off my chest and hopefully help people see that chronic migraines are a real problem and help some people to realise that it is a medical condition. This was a wordy post, apologies.
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