My back story

I feel like I am in some sort of AA meeting. "Hi, my name is Lyn, and I have Chronic Migraines." This is the beginning of a new blog series in which I will try to make a record of what it is like to live with chronic debilitating daily migraines. I hope that I can reach one person, and that this will give someone a feeling of not being alone.

I was 15 years old when I got my first migraine. I remember coming home from school crying, and grabbing my hair in both hands and pulling as hard as I could to try to control the pain. There were also times when I banged my forehead against the wall to try to distract me from the pain in my head. Obviously neither of those worked, and my biggest mistake was not telling anyone about the amount of pain I was in. As a young teen I just figured that this was normal growing pains. Boy was I wrong. It took me 11 years to figure out that something was wrong with me. And I still didn't think that anyone else experienced the things I did. Until about 5 years ago when I was able to get an office job, and the migraines began to increase.

I have held a lot of jobs in my life, I am a military veteran, I've worked at many fast food, and restaurant establishments. I've been a daycare assistant teacher, and I've worked for the military version of a women's shelter and suicide hotline. However, my longest held job was as an administrative assistant for a small local envelope company for almost three years. I answered phones, maintained an envelope production and printing schedule in Excel, and created invoices through a computer program. During my last year in the office, my migraines ramped up in their frequency and duration to the point where I was missing two and a half to three days of work a week. Under the advice of the office manager I got an FMLA form in order to try to keep my job while dealing with the migraines. Unfortunately, I was under fire from the human resources director and was written up repeatedly for things that had happened months earlier. With the combination of the migraines and the HR campaign against me, I wasn't successful in keeping my job, and in October of 2014 I became unemployed.

I did two things immediately, I applied for social security disability, and for state assistance through my local Job and Family Services office. In my local county, food stamp recipients must either volunteer or work at least 20 hours a week. I tried volunteering at a local food and clothing pantry. My pain got to the point that I was taking my two doses of rescue medication daily, and nothing was helping. By discovering one of my major migraine triggers was fluorescent lights, I was able to get a letter from my doctor stating that I cannot be around them. Fluorescent lights are present in 99.9% of public places. My local JFS was able to accept the doctors note and allowed me to keep my food stamps without having to volunteer. During this time I received two denial letters from social security disability, both stating that according to them I was not disabled, and could get any other job, as long as the noise level for that job was small. The noise level only bothers me when I am experiencing a full blown migraine, on my worst migraine days I cannot even look at a computer screen, or go anywhere that has fluorescent lights on the premises, without my head feeling like it has exploded. My major issue in finding another job, is to find one without fluorescent lights and computers.

Over the first five months after losing my job, I went from living in my own apartment with my fiancé, having my own car, having my own job, teaching Sunday School at my church, and having a good chance of getting custody of my daughter; to living at home with my mother, having my car repossessed, loosing my job, being unable to go to church with my family, let alone teach Sunday School, worrying about how I am supposed to pay child support, and wondering when I will be able to see my child.

I can not take medication every time I need to, because my insurance only allows 9 rescue pills a month, if I do not make them last, they are gone in the first two weeks. If this happens I end up in the Emergency Room being labeled a "drug seeker". That is not what I am, what I am is in pain, and sometimes an intravenous drug cocktail is the only thing that helps, and lets me feel normal, even for a minute. Most days I cannot get out of bed, let alone look at a screen of any kind. Daily, I have to deal with numerous symptoms as a result of having this chronic disease, such as: ringing in the ears, muffled hearing, constant nausea, difficulty focusing, dizziness, localized burning and itching in the brain, difficulty finding the correct words, floating spots in my vision, and feeling like I am not able to think right. Many of these symptoms are warning alarms  to me that a migraine is coming, but half the time I get them when I am already dealing with a migraine. It is difficult to lead any sort of life when a person is burdened with this kind of chronic disease.

I work hard to find the happiness and joy in everyday situations. I know "laughter is the best medication", but sometimes when a person is burdened with this much pain daily, laughter is a distant memory. The easiest thing for me to laugh at is our silly, lazy, rescue cat. She does the funniest things. My favorite is when she gets into her pounce position and wiggles her butt. That never fails to bring a smile to my face.

I would like to task anyone reading this to find one thing every day that brings a smile to your face. It can be anything, from a child's behavior, to a funny show on tv. Just find something that makes your day happy.


" I don't want my pain and struggle to make me a victim. I want my battle to make me someone else's hero" - Chronic Pain Warrior Quotes