And now, a wee rant

[mme_hardy]

...which may just have been building for some time.

Migraine is not ... a headache.
Depression is not ... the blues.
Autism is not ... bad social skills.
Hyperemesis gravidarum is not ... morning sickness.

If you have, or know somebody who has, any of the problems on the right, this tells you nothing about coping with the problems on the left.

Comments

[recessional]

Funnily, these days I can get tension headaches that can be more painful than my migraines. Can be - nowhere near always, but can be.

....they just don't come with auras, nausea, hypersensitivity to light or the feeling that I'm slightly drunk (and the absolute knowledge I am impaired as far as driving goes.)

(I am also admittedly VERY lucky, comparatively, when it comes to migraine pain and always have been. But the other symptoms can be Exciting.)

/share.

[mme_hardy]

There are a lot of kinds of evil headaches; cluster headaches sound much worse to me even than migraine.

I always felt I was lucky not to have hemiplegia, so there you go.

[recessional]

Oof, yeah.

I am....less than thrilled with the apparent new trick of mine where the prodrome manifests as a violent and painful mood crash and self-loathing. But I'm lucky enough that I can use OTC painkillers for the actual pain, so I don't complain.

[kore]

ahahaha one of the first times ever I got a migraine as an adult (had had them on and off since childhood, but with weird varying symptoms), I got the lights-going-dim entering-the-tunnel along with the classic checkerboard and thought I was having a stroke. FUN TIMES.

[recessional]

OMG, suck. D:

[kore]

Yeah, and then I read Sacks's Migraine book (BLESS YOU SACKS) and discovered the little freaky paintings of migraine visual whatsits looked....almost exactly like the doodles I had been making since grade school. Heh.

I also wound up in an ER convinced my retina was detaching after about half an hour of little flashy glowing patches, like the after-image from a lightbulb flash. No! Just a migraine indicator. WTF.

[staranise]

Yeah, I've never had a migraine, but that doesn't mean my tension headaches aren't total motherfuckers that have made me call in sick before.