My life has been colonised by migraines

My migraines begin with a hovering of exhaustion and a faint, throbbing hurt above the right eye, as if the attacker is prevaricating whether to land or not. Picture: istock

My life has been colonised by migraines. I never know when one of the insidious little stealth raids will strike or what triggers it; never know if the attack can be repelled by a medicinal slug of Coca-Cola which sometimes, beautifully, takes the edge off the clustering pain and allows normal service to resume. But only sometimes. And occasionally, three or four times a year, the migraine curls up for the long haul and grips my right temple, for several days. And within this agony is an intense vomiting which is sometimes so prolonged, over days, that traces of blood end up in the mix and I think death would be preferable, think death would be a relief.

Susie Youssef, a regular co-host of The Project, recently confessed that her migraines are so crippling she keeps a bucket on standby on live television. “Light sensitivity is a problem and my job is to be in front of lights,” she explained on air. “You’ve all witnessed this and I’ve done this show with a bucket underneath the desk, worrying I’d vomit from a migraine.”

Ah yes. I used to appear on the Today Show. The makeup women knew of my migraines and during the beginning of a gathering attack I was once slipped a caring little Coke before going on air. To get me through. But as I walked on set I felt suddenly, increasingly, ready to launch into vomiting and was panicking that this would end up as a viral moment. On I went. Somehow. A supernatural force kept me from doing the dreaded deed but I was discreetly sick into my handbag in the provided car on the way home; we couldn’t stop in time.

Three or four times a year, a migraine curls up for the long haul and grips my right temple, for several days.

The migraines begin with a hovering of exhaustion and a faint, throbbing hurt above the right eye, as if the attacker is prevaricating whether to land or not. The pain intensifies, if I’m unlucky, to a feeling of an axe embedded in my eyebrow. To bed immediately. Pillow over head. Then the illness comes. I run to the loo, sometimes vomiting on the floor or through the mask of despairing hands before I can get to the bowl; so fast and furious is the urge. I crave rest and sleep, yet can’t get it, because it feels like my head is being gripped by a vice.

Migraines crashed into my world in my mid thirties during a period of intense work stress. I was afraid of admitting to it for so long. It was the great shame: the stuff of ladies with vapours and drenched-in-sweat nightgowns, surely. But no. I now know many people who get them, men and women. We’re all assaulted slightly differently.

Occasionally drugs touch the side of mine. The migraines are cruel and arbitrary in their taunting; they’ll sometimes allow themselves to be headed off, but usually not. Often they strike on the first day of school holidays, or a Saturday, when my body has dared to release itself into relaxation. So, this is the punishment. As it was my mother’s. And paternal aunt’s and grandmother’s. I pray for release on the other side of perimenopause, as so many women long gone from my family had relief, finally, when their bleeding stopped. My mother’s agony in a darkened room 40-odd years ago – usually on a Saturday morning, after a big week of work – is mine now. And how has our lot been improved over those years? It hasn’t.

Triggers? Still don’t know. But when the attack’s over it feels like I’ve undergone a vast expelling of poisons from my life. Stress. Caffeine. Sugar. But then a change in barometric pressure can also do it. It is what it is. I hope for a great loosening in old age, beyond perimenopause, when my body forgets the grim dance of the clench. Out the other side there’s a cleansed being and a sated feeling of a storm endured. Then the forgetting begins – the forgetting of wanting to die – and life goes on until the next attack.