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Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category

Balance through the Storm – Maintaining our Health in Hard Times

December 11th, 2008

Balance is a precarious thing. Living a life in balance is a challenge for most of us in the 21st century, with the demands of careers, family, a fast-changing world, information overload. Add chronic illness into that mix and living a life in balance becomes both more crucial and more challenging.

The elements are the same, whether you are ill or well.  All of us need:

With these elements present, and balanced, in our lives, human beings can live healthy and fulfilled lives, on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels.  When these elements are lacking, or out of balance, we see problems arise. For someone without chronic illness, those problems may not show up right away. They may take years to manifest. For those of us with chronic illness, lack of balance triggers us into attacks, flare-ups, and deterioration of our conditions.

I have to confess I have struggled quite a bit with that balance lately. Like most of us, hard economic times have had their impact on my business, and I have tried to compensate by working harder and longer. To the extent to which this means I am more focused and get more done with my working time, it’s not a problem. The issue that I see is one that most of my clients experience as well, that of being unable to stop. I know I can’t work through lunch or on beyond 5:30 without real immediate consequences to my health. Trying to sustain that level of focus without rest breaks is one of my biggest Migraine triggers. Knowing that if I keep pushing now I may lose the whole day tomorrow is usually enough to stop me, but not always. Do you find it hard to maintain balance right now?

I picture us standing on the center of a see-saw. In calm weather, we can learn, through time, to balance pretty well on the center of that see-saw, training our muscles to adjust to little fluctuations and shifts of weight, to keep us in balance most of the time. If a big wind comes up, the muscles we have trained and the balance-ability we have developed just aren’t sufficient to the job any more. I think in the current economy we are standing on the center of a see-saw in a big gusty wind. We need to strenghten those balance muscles now more than ever! We need them more than ever!

Many of us are facing realities in which we must do more work to survive, or go back to work, or do different, more difficult work. I can’t give you a one-size-fits-all answer here, but remember you must relax, and breathe, and have balance. Don’t forget you can join us on Monday evenings for relaxation teleclasses. It won’t help if you work so hard it makes you too sick to work.

– Megan

See-saw sign image courtesy of Tyger_Lyllie/Kat; storm image courtesy of BCMom/Anna.

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Fun with Eye Exams – Bright Lights, Big Migraine

December 7th, 2008

Last week I had an eye exam. It’s not something I had ever thought was a big deal. The purpose was to check the pressure in my eyes. A particular type of glaucoma can be a side effect of Topamax, the Migraine preventive medication I am on. In addition, there is a correlation between low-tension glaucoma and Migraine. I learned this about a month ago when I first went in for the eye exam, in the early stages of a Migraine, and asked to be taken out of the bright noisy waiting room. The optometrist scolded me a bit for never having told them (in seven years as a patient) that I had Migraines. My experience has been that most doctors know very little about Migraine, and it never occurred to me to share it with them. I didn’t know it was relevant.

That first visit was a very satisfying patient experience. My optometrist was sympathetic and clearly quite knowledgeable about Migraine; she also refused to dilate me and do the full exam while I had a Migraine. She did a partial exam and I was scheduled to come back in a week. There followed a month where I had a Migraine every Wednesday. It was a good month for me, because those were the only Migraines I had. But for some reason, they kept coming on Wednesdays, and I kept rescheduling the eye exam for the next Wednesday. Finally last week I got a Migraine on Tuesday evening. It was still hanging around, slightly improved, on Wednesday, but I decided I would not cancel the appointment a fourth time. I decided to go ahead with the exam, come hell or high water. I’m not sure whether you would call what followed hell or high water. Maybe both.

First we did a visual fields test. No big deal. Lots of little lights blinking on in my visual field, and I had to press a button when I saw them. Apparently I did well. No blind spots. Then she dilated me. And shined very bright lights in my eyes. Very very bright lights. And then brighter ones. And I had to look directly into the bright lights. That is not something I have done in a very long time. I have spent several years shying away from bright lights.

When I got home I spent the evening in a dim room, blurry eyed, in sunglasses. I tried to read, work on this blog, watch tv. My Migraine came back to life with a vengeance. And hung around another 24 hours, wringing me out like a wet rag. It took days for me to feel well again. So, no, I don’t recommend getting an eye exam with a Migraine. Problem is, if I hadn’t had a Migraine I’d say the chance is pretty high I would have gotten one. The good news is I don’t have any kind of glaucoma, and I was approved to increase my medication dosage. My eyes are in good shape. It’s my brain that’s a little iffy.

– Megan

Eyeball image courtesy of Rob Bell; retina image courtesy of Eliya Selhub.

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Holidays don’t have to Hurt your Head

December 1st, 2008

How was your Thanksgiving? We just got back from a very relaxed five day trip to my sister’s house, where the extended family descends for an annual Thanksgiving extravaganza. There are a lot of reasons to love it. My sister and brother-in-law and nephews are warm and welcoming and they pull out all the stops to accommodate everyone. Danny and I bake pies and cook some side dishes and load them in the car with ourselves, our kids and our luggage, maybe some fruit and wine, and off we go. We don’t have to clean the house (not that it couldn’t use it). We get a mini-vacation from the worries of our daily life. Their house is set up so that even with a crowd, the upstairs rooms are pretty sound-proof, so if a Migraineur needs a quiet retreat, there is one.

I am very thankful at Thanksgiving time, for the loving and accepting, funny, intelligent and interesting family I have, the fun times and wonderful food we share. I have many blessings to count. I have never managed to travel to this particular fest, however, without at least a little pang of wishing it were different. I wish I could host an event like this at my house. I wish that I could host any event of more than a handful of people for more than a few hours, without getting a Migraine. I wish that my home was orderly, organized and clean to the point that preparing for overnight guests wasn’t such a huge task.

The internet and the newspapers right now are full of articles on how to have happy holidays on a shoe-string, or how to enjoy the holidays without the stress, and I don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Over at My Migraine Connection you can read Teri Robert’s interview with Marcia Cross on Holiday Parties with Migraines. Coming up on December 8, the December Headache & Migraine Blog Carnival will be posted at Somebody Heal Me on the topic of “Maximizing Your Enjoyment of the Holiday Season,” and there will be lots of good reading on the topic, I’m sure! (If you’d like to submit a post for the carnival, the deadline is the midnight Friday, December 5th, and you can submit your post at this link at Somebody Heal Me.)

What I’m here to say is – the holidays don’t have to hurt your head. Like me, you may find there are things you have to give up. I conceded Thanksgiving to my sister years ago, since she loves doing it so much, but for most of the past 6 years we have hosted a big holiday weekend at our house around New Year’s. We won’t be doing that this year. Having that many people in my house, and that much noise, for an extended period of time, is a whole series of Migraine triggers for me. I end up missing a chunk of the celebration, I’m not much of a hostess, my family feels bad for me, and I’m in pain that often lasts days after everyone leaves.

I was surprised to find myself in tears when I told everyone we would not be hosting this year. It’s not like it was unexpected! The truth is that it is hard to give up on something we want to do. What we can do is to look below the thing itself, and see what is important to us, and how else we can express that.

When you look at your holiday season, think about what is important to you, and how you can express that without hurting your head. One holiday party may be much better than five. You may not have to wear yourself out to cook huge meals – choose one or two things that are important to you or your loved ones. The quantity of toys will mean less to your kids than the time you take to stop and play with them.

I gave up trying to be Martha Stewart years ago, but as my Migraines became more frequent I have had to give up more. So where we used to make six kinds of Christmas cookies, maybe we will make two. Where we used to have 18 people for a holiday weekend with a big dinner, we will ask a smaller group to join us for just dinner on Christmas day. Where we used to climb on the roof and hang lights, we light a few windows. In our family we have always celebrated Hannukah and Christmas, since we have a mixed background, but several years ago we became clear that our kids didn’t need gifts every night of Hannukah and under the tree and in their stockings!  We buy less, and light the candles to remember our heritage and hope in the darkness, rather than as a reason for eight more gifts.

Festivity is great fun, but it can also be addicting. Advertising tells us to do more, buy more. Many people find that however much they spend and do, they still fall short of the “perfect” holiday they imagine in their mind’s eye. As Migraineurs, we need to go easy on ourselves. Whether or not you’re hurting financially this season, you don’t need the added stress of worrying about whether you have bought or done enough. A little can go a long way. What is most important to you about the holidays? Is it time with loved ones? An expression of peace and hope? Find ways to express what is important to you, that don’t hurt your head. Remember to get regular sleep, eat regularly, avoid your Migraine triggers, and enjoy the joys of the season!

Peace!

– Megan

Sliced turkey image coutesy of Roland Tanglao; advent candles image courtesy of Per Ola Wiberg; menorah image courtesy of Andrew Ratto.

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We Can’t Avoid Every Migraine

November 19th, 2008

This may seem obvious, but it’s something I need to remind myself of from time to time. We can’t avoid every Migraine. The job before us in managing life with Migraine disease is to avoid as many as we can, through avoiding triggers, getting rest, exercise, nourishment, drinking enough water, living a healthy life, through relaxing and calming our nervous systems, through getting the best medical treatment we can, appropriate use of medications, using other therapies to help us maintain ourselves, balancing our energy and our work-load, getting support, getting to know our own bodies and our own reactions… are you breathless yet? Yes, we do all of that, and it is a big job, and most of us can have a huge impact on the number and severity of Migraine attacks that we get. But we can’t avoid every Migraine.

I didn’t avoid the one that hit me last night. Sometimes you can see them coming, you can see the set up as it is happening, like in a movie where you start yelling at the heroine, “No, don’t open that door, don’t do it!” but she does it anyway. Here’s what happened to me: I missed a dose of my preventive medication; I had several days of anxiety over current financial uncertainties; I slept badly for two nights; I got my period; something upset me and I cried; I had a fun and exciting radio interview which I enjoyed very much; I began feeling some head pain and didn’t take an abortive right away because I needed to drive my kids to some appointments.

Chances are that even with the large stack of triggers I was dealing with, if I had taken my triptan and laid down at the first sign of pain, I probably would have minimized the Migraine, if not eliminated it altogether. In a perfect world, my husband wouldn’t have had an important commitment I didn’t want him to miss, and could have driven the kids. Hell, in a perfect world, we’d have safe available public transportation! No, wait a second, in a perfect world we’d have the public transportation and I wouldn’t have the Migraine!

Instead, I took Adam to his drum lesson, then we went to the library until it was time to get Rachel from her rehearsal, then we sat outside the High School for 45 minutes until she was let out from the rehearsal. I should have let her drive home but the effort of climbing out of the driver’s seat and into another was too much to face. By the time I got home I could only climb upstairs, vomit, give myself an Imitrex injection, and lie down. I couldn’t find my ice packs. The pain was so intense that even shifting position in bed made my head pound. All I could do was lie perfectly still with my bean-bag eye mask, do my relaxation breathing, and wait for the pain to ease. After a couple of hours it let up enough that I could sleep. It’s still with me today, though much less intense. I think if I keep very quiet it will leave today.

I am lucky that I don’t get a Migraine that bad very often. Not more than once every month or two. Most often I am able to treat the Migraines I get right away; most of them do not progress to that kind of excruciating pain. Life happens, though. We don’t live in a perfect world. We have a disease; we do the best we can. I have been going about a week between Migraines, which is great progress. I’m grateful. I hope you are doing well too.

– Megan

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Migraine News from Between my Ears

October 17th, 2008


A funny thing happens when you start blogging.  There is this little bit of celebrity that arises.  I can admit that like many people I once secretly wanted to be famous.  My friend Laura told me in High School that she pictured me as a kind of revolutionary leader, with thousands chanting my name.  If that had ever been my ambition, I’d have to say that I failed miserably.  I’ve made it through nearly 50 years of life and I don’t think even dozens have ever chanted my name.  Not at the same time, anyway.

But I digress.  I started this blog for a few reasons.  I wanted a place to share my thoughts on living with Migraine disease, and the other chronic illnesses I live with.  I particularly wanted to share my hope and strength, as someone who has come a long way in managing a life with these conditions.  I wanted to join the warm, intelligent, funny and committed community of Migraine and headache
bloggers and advocates who are making such a difference in the lives of patients and in advancing the understanding of this disease.  The big reason was this moment of truth I had almost a year ago, when I realized that my chronic illnesses are not just an impediment in my life; they
are an opportunity to
share my professional tools and skills, and the
wisdom I have accumulated, to help others manage their lives with
Migraine.  I wrote a bit more about that a few months back in My Migraine Story.

I didn’t really start the blog to keep the world posted on the doings in my own life.  I tell a lot of stories, partly because I come from a family of storytellers,and partly because I’ve always made points (with clients and anyone who will listen) by telling personal stories, about things that happen and lessons I learn.  So it’s been a lot of fun doing that here.  And lo and behold, I learn that people are actually following (to some extent) what’s going on in my life.  Little old me, Megan, Rachel & Adam’s Mom, Danny’s wife, Joan & Jim’s daughter, Jon & Ellen’s sister, the lady in the house on the corner by the field, the little red-head… that one.  It’s a small and gentle sort of celebrity, but I find when I don’t follow up on things I’ve mentioned, sure enough, you’re actually listening, and sometimes you ask.

So the news between my ears…

Hope your heads treat you well and you have an AWAP weekend!
– Megan Oltman

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Topamax Trials

October 8th, 2008

Just a quick update on my trials of/on Topamax.  No tribulations so far, knock wood (picture me
knocking on my head.)  I’ve just finished my third week on the minimum dosage.  This is too soon to tell whether it is working as a preventive.  I have had 5 Migraines in those 3 weeks – which is on the low side of average for me, but three weeks is not a good sample – any given three week period could be better or worse.  More to the point I may need a higher dosage for full effectiveness, and the medication takes some time to build up in the system.

Topamax is an anti-seizure medication, originally developed for the treatment of epilepsy.  Its Migraine preventive effect was discovered in some epileptic patients who were also Migraineurs.  It is currently one of very few medications actually approved by the FDA for Migraine prevention, all of them originally developed for other purposes.  There are 100 other medications that have been effectively used to prevent Migraines; Topamax is not the only game in town.  It may be the first some doctors try, since it is fairly well known, but unfortunately also has a high side-effect profile.  For people who are sensitive to medications, as are many Migraineurs, this is a dilemma.

Typically people feel tingling in their fingers and toes, less often in the lips and other places.  I emailed my doctor after about a week on the stuff when I was having intense itchy tingling in my lips and nose, tongue and TEETH (who ever heard of itching teeth?),
top of my scalp, behind my ears, my kneecaps, elbows, ankles, tops of
my fingers, outsides of my thighs, shoulder blades, upper eyelids. It
kept waking me up one night.  I was worried that this might be an allergic reaction.  Dr. G emailed back that unless there was a rash, it was probably not a problem.  I had no rash and the tingling disappeared the next day.

The other side effect I was most concerned about was mental cloudiness.  Some people have reported so much mental fog and forgetfulness that the drug has earned the nick-name Dopamax!  I’ve had a little trouble with finding the right words, but that seems to be passing.  I’ve found that my ability to multi-task, or keep a sequence in my mind is somewhat impaired.  I have to concentrate harder, write more lists since my ability to make a mental list is less than usual.

I’ve been pretty sparse with the posts here the last few weeks and I put that down to adjusting to the new medication.  I am lucky that I’m not spacier still.  After nearly 50 years you get used to the way your brain works, and to find your thinking change is a big adjustment.  It’s like re-routing around road work.  I’ve always had a good internal GPS system, but these days I have to pull out a map.  And check it again every few minutes.

– Megan

Block head image courtesy of Stefan; road work image courtesy of Hubbers.


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Why Do We Try to Get Better? Living Inside a Goal.

October 6th, 2008


What are we getting better for?  What are we here for?  I realize these are big questions and challenging even for minds that aren’t screaming with pain, let alone those that cope with frequent Migraines.  They are central questions to creating and sustaining the will and optimism to keep pushing through the pain and discouragement that comes with a life with chronic illness.  Searching for the larger, deeper meanings, a connection to humankind, the world, the divine, is an important part of the human experience.  There comes a time in our lives when most of us wonder what we are here for, what our mission is, what we are uniquely put on this earth to do.  Be it spiritual, altruistic, political, creative, there is something that sustains us, that pulls us forward.

It is easy to lose sight of this when we struggle with pain.  Ending the suffering becomes important enough that we can forget there is more to it.  I don’t believe there is anything inherently ennobling in pain.  “No pain no gain” is a bankrupt philosophy.  People can achieve great personal growth out of learning experiences based in pain.  They can also become embittered, limited and frightened by pain.  People can achieve great personal growth without great pain.  There are no guarantees, no formulas.  My experience is that when we are living inside a known, expressed purpose or goal, it gives a larger context to our experiences that makes it worth moving forward, worth seeking out the learning, worth looking beyond the pain.

As a coach, I help people determine their goals for their lives – what possibilities they will create for themselves and the world, what they value most that they want to promote.  Of course if we are ill we want to feel better, but feel better for what?  Feel better so I can be a person who can squeeze every moment of enjoyment out of life, and give it to everyone around me?  That’s worth feeling better for!  You get there at least in part, and as much as possible, by living that way today.  So we talked a few weeks ago in this blog about having fun, because your life is NOW, not someday when you’re all better.  If your goal is to have a family full of love, have it NOW, today.  If you want to be creative, be creative now.

My goal, in its most recent expression, is to build lives in balance – creating wellness, joy and
abundance.  That means for me, my family, my friends, my clients.  It means that’s how I approach my politics, my community, my world.  It means that’s how I make choices about my day.  When I spend the whole weekend with Migraines, as I did this weekend, I need to think about what a life in balance looks like in that context.  For me this time it looked like staying in bed when I felt like I should be up and helping, taking medication when I didn’t want to, accepting that two beautiful October days were going by with me inside, inviting my children and my husband to spend time with me in my bedroom, one by one, since I couldn’t deal with them in a noisy group in the noisy downstairs.  It meant putting off this writing and some other work until today.  I’m glad my pain is mostly gone today.  But even gladder that I can be more active in pursuing my goal today.

Think about what you’re here for.  Your unique contribution, your humor, your helpfulness, your intelligence, your skills, your drive, your compassion, your biscuits, your strength.  Take care of yourself, your nervous system, your body and soul, so the world can have that, the gift you are.  Do what it takes to be well inside of that.  Get better for that.

– Megan Oltman

Night sky courtesy of Adan Garcia; summer field courtesy of Zenera/Serena.

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Migraine, Chronic Illness and the Not So Happy Homemaker, or All in a Labor Day’s Work

September 1st, 2008

I do not claim to have ever been a great homemaker. I enjoy well organized space. I enjoy design, and
line, and tweaking the environment around me for comfort, beauty, and efficiency. So perhaps I am a perpetually frustrated homemaker, because these joys are rarely ever mine. I live in a state of clutter, disorganization, confusion and catch-up. Uh-oh, now I’ve told the truth. Will you ever listen to what I have to say again?

Wherever you start on the spectrum from neat-freak to pig-pen, Migraine and chronic illness will hamper your ability to get it all done. I remember a time before my Migraines and sinus infections became frequent, before chronic fatigue reared its ugly head, and, let’s face it, before I had children, when my home was tidy on a weekly basis, at least. When Danny and I first moved in together I wanted to get up on Saturday morning and get the housework over with, and then enjoy the rest of the weekend. He wanted to lounge around on Saturday morning and get to it later. Which generally meant we’d be cleaning at 5 pm, when we had plans to go out later, and we would do less than I wanted, and I would worry about it and not get to relax at all. But this is a blog about Migraine, right, not about relationships?  I thought that issue was difficult at the time. What I deal with now is of a different order of magnitude.

I have a generous, hard-working and willing husband who tries to maintain order in our home, with or without my help. He is also a fabulous cook and does most of the cooking. I have a nearly adult daughter who is a willing helper when she has the time, and a son who has come a long way with being helpful. I am also the one of the four of us who is not diagnosed with ADHD. This means I am the only one who can really multi-task. It means I’m the only one who notices a lot of the clutter. It means that I am the Captain of this house. So if the Captain is in sick bay, the ship may end up on the rocks.

I have had, this past 12 months, the worst year for Migraine and the year with the most sick days, since I began my Migraine and wellness diary 5 years ago. That means the house is in an advanced state of mess. It had never been tidy, but it’s worse than usual. Deborah at Weathering Migraine Storms posts about her craft projects and I feel jealous – I love crafting too, but it seems pointless to decorate when everything is a mess. The energy I’d like to spend on creativity, or on organizing, is so often taken up with the basics, dishes, kitchen counters, laundry.

But I have to stop and count my blessings. Unlike some Migraineurs, I can still work for a living. So if my energy and time is limited, and I spend it helping to keep a roof over my family’s head, I can’t fault myself for the state of things under that roof.

My advice to you, and me: cut yourself some slack. Do the best you can and take the time to enjoy life.  Keep blocking out your time in the calendar to make the most of the time you have, working from your priorities.  See More Time Management for Migraineurs: Managing the Time we Have for some more ideas on how to do that.  As for me, today I’m post-drome and having some vertigo. I am doing my best to make my way through a back-log of dishes (the dishwasher is broken) and fold the laundry, with plenty of resting time in between. Happy Labor Day!

– Megan Oltman

Dirty dishes image courtesy of Easternblot – eva.

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Can Crying be Bad for You?

August 15th, 2008

I believe firmly that it is good to express our emotions, rather than suppress them.  Sometimes we
just need to cry.  Crying on a friend’s shoulder.  Weeping at a funeral.  I’ve had several such completely appropriate crying occasions this summer.  Both times I got Migraines.  Today I have a sinus infection.   It’s a crying shame!

I am speculating here, and make no claims to scientific accuracy in this post.  I’m wondering about the physiology of crying.  It’s more than just salty water running down your face.  I don’t know if anyone really cries like they do in the movies, or in literature, delicate trails of tears, without anything swelling, nothing disgusting.  I’ve certainly never been able to achieve that.  For me, crying involves swollen nasal passages, a red blotchy puffy face, a fountaining nose.  Altogether much yuck.  Crying is a well-known Migraine trigger.  I suspect the good old trigeminal nerve must be involved – it runs right through and controls all the regions involved in a sob-fest.  And then it must get irritated, and set those neurons on their merry way, doing their haywire Migraine thing.

I don’t know if I can explain the sinus infection this way, but I’ll try.  I’m not suggesting spontaneous generation – there must have been an infectious agent.  Who knows what rhinoviruses lurked at the airport, on the plane, in the rental cars, in the colleges and even friends’ homes we visited.   But I suspect that my crying must have swollen passages and shut down my tiny sinus ducts, trapping some opportunistic organisms, backing things up and leading to infection.

Yesterday I attended a very sad memorial service.  A friend lost his wife – a bright, funny, lovely woman of 37.  Witnessing his pain, and the pain of her parents and siblings, all of her friends, his friends…  Well there was much weeping.  Completely appropriate weeping.  I felt knocked out for the rest of the day, and by evening I had a Migraine, my throat was sore and my sinuses were doing their nasty thing.  Today I think the weeping is still going on – just inside my head rather than on my face.

Like so many things that can trigger us, crying can’t be avoided.  It’s part of life.  Probably I would have gotten this infection anyway.   So I will remember LM from my bed today, drink lots of tea, take my vitamin C and zinc and magnesium, and hope this clears up soon.

– Megan

Crying clown face image courtesy of Prakhar Amba.

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God Grant me the Serenity to Accept the Migraines I Cannot Change

July 11th, 2008

I try to live by the serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This simple prayer has seen me through family issues, recovery from major illness, life crisis and transitions, grief, job loss, financial difficulty.  It is the mantra I repeat as the pain takes over my head, as I wait for my meds to work, as I practice deep breathing to relax my mind and body.  It keeps me focussed where I need to be, in knowing what I can change and what I can’t, not wasting my energy where I cannot change something, not sitting in useless despair when there is something I can do.  It also keeps me in the moment.  I cannot change anything in the past.  I can only change the future by taking the next right action to lead me where I want to go, not by wishing, hoping, fantasizing or sitting immobilized in fear.

There’s no way for me to write a post about spirituality without talking about what I believe, which is deeply personal and which I rarely discuss.  I grew up with a Jewish mother (from a not very religious family) and a father who was the son of Presbyterian missionaries, celebrated holidays from both religions but was raised pretty much as an atheist, and then became a Quaker (along with most of my family) as a teenager.  Spirituality and faith may never be a simple matter for me.  I don’t consider myself a religious person, but I am a spiritual person.

There’s no way to write a post about spirituality, I think, without turning some of you off.  Some may already be turned off by the use of the word “God.”  Some were turned off by my description of my unusual religious background.  Some will be excited by it and see it as an opportunity to convert me.  Please resist that temptation!  Some will be turned off in a moment when I tell you that I consider myself to be a faithful agnostic.  What does that mean?   I have faith in a power greater than myself, in a power for good, the power of love, a power that unites people, incites altruism, brings us to care for more than our own selfish interests, “that of God in every man.”  I believe there is more out there than we can see, perceive or know in any scientific sense.  But I’m… blessed if I know what it is!  I don’t even think it’s important for me to know what it is!
How does this help me with Migraine disease?  I don’t go down the road of “God gave me Migraines for a reason.”  Whatever else I believe, I can’t get behind the idea of a God who causes suffering, for any reason.  I think more that we live in this gloriously complex world where we have sunsets and earthquakes, roses and poison ivy, kittens and sharks, senses of humor and migraines.   It’s a complex system that somehow all works together, and we are part of it, warts and all.  Migraines and all.

I do believe, though, in my God, my higher power, as a comforter.  As the force of love, of good.  To help me through pain, to help me remember that I am not the pain, that I am more than the disease, that I am here to help others, to make the world better.  Sometimes in the midst of a migraine, I have a moment of feeling like this is all there is, no world exists outside the pain.  I say the serenity prayer.  It reminds me that there is more.  That I am more.  That another day will dawn when I am without pain and can get on with living.  That the beauty of the world is still there waiting.  I do think it takes faith to live with Migraine disease.  Ridiculous faith and unconquerable hope.  I am amazed by the ridiculous faith and unconquerable hope I see in my fellow migraineurs.  And I find serenity there too.

– Megan
Wishing you serenity and freedom from pain

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Learn to Manage your Life with Migraine:

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