I remember being 7 years old, in first grade, and feeling a searing pain come across my forehead. My eyes got blurry. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to cry. I had never felt pain like that before, and I didn’t know what to do.
I suffered from this pain on and off for over 11 years. It progressively got worse. My vision would go blurry, I would get so sick that I would be throwing up for two days straight to the point where I had nothing left in my stomach but bile. I would have anxiety attacks because I would feel the pain coming on and get scared of vomiting.
I first heard the word ‘migraine’ when I was about 16 years old. My parents knew what they were, but they didn’t want to put me on medication for them because at the time the medication available was a narcotic, and who wants their 16-year-old on a narcotic?
When I turned 18, I finally asked my doctor about medication for migraines. Thankfully, my primary care physician suffered from debilitating migraines, too, so she was very knowledgeable about medications for this condition. She gave me a pill I could take when a migraine came on, and I relied on that during my first year of college.
But, halfway through my freshman year, the medication stopped working.
That’s where my real chronic pain story begins.
I was put on medication after medication, and time after time, they failed. I had read enough about migraines and chronic head pain online to realize that I was one of “those people.” One of “those people” who was basically unresponsive to the normal migraine medications.
While I have found a treatment plan that works 75 percent of the time, I still live with this chronic pain. I get about 10 migraines a month, during a good month. During a bad one? I get about 20.
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Throughout my time suffering from chronic pain in my head, I’ve had a lot of people make comments. I’ve had friends who thought I was faking my condition. I’ve had co-workers discriminate against me, question my condition and tell me I would never, ever be successful because I suffered from migraines. I even had one co-worker tell me she just didn’t believe that I got “that many” migraines a month.
I get looks from pharmacists and others who find out I am actually on a narcotic pain medication to knock out my worst migraines. I have been treated as a drug addict. I’ve had people joke around about how cool it must be to be able to get “high” whenever I got a migraine.
It’s not cool. I can’t drive. I can’t function. I am still confined to my bed with the pain dulled by the buzz I’m starting to feel from the codeine running through my system.
I’m only in my 20s, and I’ve been suffering from the chronic pain my entire life. It is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
But what I really want people to know is that even though I have a chronic health condition, I am still a person. I still have feelings. I still have passions. I can still function, most of the time. Comments of disbelief, discrimination, judgment – they all hurt me. Being treated like a drug addict hurts me because I am 100 percent responsible with the medication I am given. I see a doctor every month for a regular medication check, and I am only allowed a certain number of pills a month as it is.
I am a daughter, sister, best friend, lawyer, equestrian, writer, niece. I am smart, funny, kind, a little silly, a good writer, a fast reader, love to play with my dog, addicted to trashy reality television and a social media maven.
I may have chronic pain – something associated with someone older than I am – but that doesn’t make me any less of a person.
