Member-only story
The Silent Pain of Living with Chronic Pain
I can’t really remember a time in my life when waking up with searing pain above my eye, or a throbbing so deep that I assume my brain will explode with the my next heartbeat wasn’t normal.
I know that I didn’t have migraines when I was a child, that they came upon me when I became a teenager, when hormones were thrown into the mix of my body, but it feels like this pain has always been there, always been on the back of my mind. And, you know what? It’s starting to wear me the fuck down.
My migraines started in high school, but were very episodic. No big deal, I could pop some Advil and away I went to school or my job. Soon, Advil wasn’t cutting it, though, and naproxen came onto the scene. I loved naproxen and it seemed like the best solution for my pain. However, it didn’t last long. I’ve had a long road of different pain relievers, all working at one time, but never really hitting the pain every time, or for the long-haul. I now know this to be normal for most everyone, but it is one of the most annoying parts of finding something that works only to find out it only works sometimes. Cue the start of fatigue of finding treatments.
Years went by and the migraines only got worse. They went from episodic to chronic, and it was normal for me to have 11–15 migraines a month. I was in pain every single weekend, when my…