Catherine Yronwode

Catherine Yronwode, 1972, at the Garden of Joy Blues. © 2003 Catherine Yronwode (see here)

My first headache/migraine

By Catherine Yronwode

Funny ... i remember in the 6th grade, when i was 12, the school nurse had us fill out a form and we were to list our worst health problem, in our own words, and i wrote "headaches" -- and she called me in, very concerned! My mother reassured her that i didn't have anything abnormal, that "headaches run in the family" -- and so i was never taken to a doctor. My aunt had "sick headaches" and shut herself in a dark room once a month. My father's aunt was fabled in the family for staying in her room in the dark when her head hurt, usually for three days at a time. It's normal, apparently. I am told that headaches are not a good enough excuse to get out of school.

Flash forward 12 or 14 years -- i am lying on the ground -- in the dirt! -- outside my cabin home moaning in pain because my head hurts so bad that i can't stand up and i have to keep my right eye closed because "the sun is too bright." After an hour i get up and go inside and go to sleep. This is the worst headache i have ever had, but i am a hippie and i don't have money to go to a doctor.

About a year later i have a new boyfriend named David Haenke and he tells me that he has migraines. I ask what they are like. He draws me a picture of a migraine aura of the typical C-shaped zig-zag and explains how it flashes and pulses and grows larger and larger in diameter and then vanishes out of his field of vision and then his head starts to hurt. I keep the drawing for a while. It seems very exotic.

My headaches are horrible, and i get one every month, right when i get my period, but i can handle them and i don't need to go to a doctor. They are never quite as bad as the one where i lay in the dirt, so i know i am not dying. I often have weird dreams of orange and black flashing quilt patterns that morph and mutate and every time i have one of those dreams, i wake up with a ghastly headache. Flashing lights give me headaches. Sunlight gives me headaches. I stay in the dark a lot. My partners and friends all seem to know how to give me head and neck rubs and how to pull all the curtains shut and keep it dark for me when the pain gets bad. This goes on for years. No one uses the word "migraine," because "migraine" is exotic and weird and we all know that these are just the ordinary old "sick headaches" that "run in the family."

Flash forward 20 more years. I am in my mid 40s. I am proofreading a page of typesetting for a comic book. Suddenly the type starts to flash on and off in time with my heartbeat. I think i am having a stroke. Then i notice that the flashing lights are connected by inky black lines, making a string of dark and light segments that forms a backward-facing letter C. I put a piece of blank paper in front of me and trace the lines, but by the time i am done, they have moved outward into a larger half-circle, so i draw them again, and then a third time, all on the same piece of appear. I write. "Flashing white spots connected by zig-zag black lines. If i die, this is the last thing i saw." I don't get a headache, but my right temple feels cold and bruised.

The next day i find the paper i drew on and OH MY GOD! I realize that i have drawn the exact same zig-zag "migraine" pattern that David Haenke drew for me 20 years earlier! But if it's a migraine -- why didn't i get a headache? I pull a medical textbook down off my shelf and learn about ocular migraine or aura without headache. I realize i've had migraines since i was 12. At the age of 45 i go to a doctor about the problem for the first time. She says, "Yes, you have classic migraine with aura." Duh.

(Catherine Yronwode, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Remember your first headache/migraine?, October 18, 2003)

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