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I had Migraines for a whole year!
By bigpumpkin | September 29, 2007
1996 London - I suffered from terrible migraines. I was a walking log, seeing floating spots, feeling hammers smashing my skull, yet numb on one side of my then slim body :-). Nothing made any sense. Sometimes different areas would hurt more and different areas would get numb, also in varying degrees.
It was very scary. It crippled me and I knew something was very wrong. There were days when I was so ill, I could only lie in bed. And even in bed, I would suffer as no painkiller would stop the numbness or pain. I cried a lot. And skipped work a lot.
I had countless tests done in the UK (thank goodness they were all free since I was under the National Health Service - NHS) but they couldn’t seem to diagnose the problem. At one point, they suggested it could have been a deteriorating kidney.
Things were so bad that I came back to KL and saw more Doctors. And would you believe it, a Malaysian neurologist (albeit trained abroad) finally deciphered the medical cryptogram that I was suffering from hemiplegic migraines. You cannot imagine what relief it is to finally know why you are going through what you are going through - a pressure cooker with it’s lid just untightened.
For your interest, hemiplegic migraine develops after years and years of stress. So CHILL……..people. I’m serious.
The next step was treatment. The neurologist fed me a cocktail of drugs that I had to digest long term. They worked but I felt like one of those blow up dolls all the time. Very stoned. So I stopped them after a few months and never went back.
I was lucky that the migraines miraculously started getting less and less. I would count the days that I wouldn’t get an attack and when it lessened to one attack in three months, I knew I was definitely getting better. Of course, at the time they didn’t have botox for migraines. The experience was so traumatic that I would have considered anything!
Topics: despondence, On the way to madness, Split the Pumpkin!, Illnesses, Medical |
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