Living with Migraine in My 30s
My migraine disease has evolved from one decade to the next. What began as infrequent attacks in my childhood during the 1960s and 1970s gradually increased in my teens. My official diagnosis happened when I was 23 years old. I spent the rest of my 20s figuring out my triggers and learning how to combine an incurable illness with a career and relationships.
I rarely talked to friends or co-workers about my migraine illness. It didn’t occur to me that other people might need or want to know. When treatment includes retreating into dark silence, it feels like a solo dilemma, not a group project. In the 1990s, migraine facts were not common knowledge. Misconceptions convinced me to keep quiet and cope, especially in the workplace and in my social life.
I don’t remember if I told my then-boyfriend about the illness before or after we were engaged. In 1994, when I was 30 years old, he married me anyway. I also don’t remember the first bad migraine episode that he saw, but he remembers it. He felt helpless. That’s when I first considered that the people around me might benefit from knowing more about migraine.
Somewhere in my early 30s, I had a sharp increase in migraine frequency. An increase noticeable enough to send me to the doctor. The doctor told me this can sometimes happen while taking birth control pills. I would have still tried using birth control pills but knowing that it could be a trigger would have been nice to know up-front. I could have avoided some needless pain.
In the end, I added another item to my trigger list, searched for a new doctor, and I learned to ask better questions at my doctor visits. A couple of questions I kept asking were:
When will there be a tablet version of sumatriptan available?
The sooner I could take a pill instead of sticking myself with a needle, the better.
When will there be a cheaper generic version of sumatriptan available?
Expensive medication was hard to swallow when I wasn’t sure that what I was feeling were early symptoms of a migraine or something else. I didn’t want to waste my expensive migraine medicine on tension or sinus headaches.
The Biggest Game Changers
Tablet version - The 1990s was the decade of the triptans. Sumatriptan tablets came out in 1991. I tried them as soon as I found out they were available. I quickly learned the tablet version worked best if taken at the onset of the earliest symptoms. If the symptoms progressed, then the shot was still necessary to abort the attack. Arming myself with both forms of medicine was the best way to manage treatment. Both remained expensive throughout my 30s. The wait for generics continued.
The Internet - Information at your fingertips accelerated everything, including my migraine management plan. The health information website we all know as WebMD was started in the late 1990s. From websites and message boards, I learned the scientific legitimacy of migraine, the best methods for fighting the disease, and the fact that I am not alone.
My team - In my 30s, my support team began with my husband’s desire to help and grew to include friends, family, and even a few co-workers. I still wasn’t shouting from the rooftops about my problem, but whenever someone was willing to listen, I explained. Misconceptions grow smaller with each person who learns.
My 30s were a time of ramping up education about my disease for myself and for those around me. The more I learned, the better I became at managing migraines and spreading awareness. This still holds true today.
Original post at WebMD.com on 5/6/2024.
