Migraine & Headache Awareness Month (12 days of Migraine Disease)

June is Migraine & Headache Awareness Month, so I thought I’d write briefly about something I rarely write about – migraine!

I’ve had migraine disease for more than half of my life – maybe all of it.  Migraine has been called a genetically based neurological disease.  We know it is connected to genetic defects, and we also know it’s connected to neurology – that is, the messages that are sent throughout your body using things like electric impulses and chemicals.

It used to be thought that migraine was caused by changes in changes in blood vessels (constriction and dilation), but now we know that this isn’t the case.

One possible symptoms of migraine is headache (from mild to severe).  However, not all migraine attacks include headache, and if they do they may not include it all the time.  Migraine without headache can be very disabling, as can migraine with headache.

Common symptoms include nausea, sensitivity to light and noise, vertigo, pain in various parts of the body, trouble speaking, confusion, numbness, hallucinations, congestion, and many more strange things.

For your interest I’m posting a chart of the intensity of my symptoms over the past 12 days (not including yesterday).  Let me note just a few things.

First, this records the level of symptoms, not necessarily headache.  The higher the red part goes, the more intense/disabling the symptoms.

A very good day would be 2 or lower.  None of those over the past 12 days.

3 is pretty normal.  Get to 4, and it’s really on your mind.

At 5 it gets hard to do normal things.  At level 6, I may be cancelling appointments, and could be in bed.

At 7 I may or may not be able to get anything done at home – probably in bed.  Hopefully not out and about.

At 8, I probably can’t even sit up and read.  At 9 – well, it’s not something we’ll talk about.

10 is a theoretical number – I would hopefully pass out from pain that intense.  I’ve recorded 9.5, maybe 9.75 – but never 10.

The last 12 days have had low numbers that are unusually high – that is, very little below 4.  But the high numbers have maybe been unusually low – I didn’t record anything beyond a 7.  So this may not be typical – just what the last 12 days have been like.

Here you are: