Member-only story
My Life With Migraines
Exploring the impact of chronic pain
A few weeks ago, I started to feel a little weird at work. It’s hard to explain, but it was a fuzzy feeling in my brain. I was a little more tired than normal.
I took some of my migraine medication, because that’s the warning sign that my migraine is coming on. That night, everything seemed normal. I made dinner, I ate. In a bout of good thinking, I drank 12 oz of an electrolyte drink.
Then I fell asleep. My husband tried to wake me up to go shopping, but I told him I had a headache. In the middle of the night, I woke up, and threw up.
Then I couldn’t stop throwing up. I took my anti-nausea med, and threw it right back up again. I was shaking and sweating. Exhausted, I fell back asleep.
When my morning alarm went off, I started throwing up all over again. I had to call out sick in between bouts of puking. My headache was now severe. My husband asked if I wanted to go to the ER, and I considered it. But the thought of sitting in a waiting room chair for hours, under bright lights, while I was vomiting, was unbearable. I could barely even walk. I stayed in bed.
That afternoon, I threw up for my third bout. By this point I had nothing left in my stomach, so I was basically dry heaving. But after one more nap, the worst…
