A little background

I've been prone to headaches all my life, but up till the spring of 2004, things were fairly manageable.
In past years, while I had headaches two or three times a month, mostly they were easily managed with ibuprofen.
I learned that regular exercise, riding my bike, yoga, things like that, helped a great deal to keep things under control.
I had what I would have termed a knock-down, drag-out migraine only once every two or three years.
And even those -- they never lasted longer than a day, I could usually sleep through the worst of them, and when I woke up they were gone.
Then, early in 2004, things started to change.
I began having headaches that ibuprofen wouldn't cure, and they started progressing with greater frequency into intense migraines.
I got my first prescription for a migraine medication -- Relpax -- that spring.
I only took it once that spring -- I was at work and it made me feel very strange. Kind of fatigued and spacey. It noticeably affected my ability to do my job.
Things settled down in the summer. I didn't feel the need to take Relpax again until perhaps late August or early September.
It wasn't uncommon for me to have a headache or two while I was on my period, but I started having more and more of them.
One month I would have them three or four days in a row.
The next month it would be six or seven.
Then, by November, I was having them every day.
Maybe I should mention here that when they first started, I tended to think the headaches were stress related. I did -- and do -- have a stressful job.
In the past, I'd found exercise was a good prevention and cure for tension headaches, so I began getting up an hour earlier than normal each day and going for a bike ride. Now, I love riding my bike, but even more than that, I love sleep. I hate getting up early, so I want you to appreciate what a sacrifice I was making.
But it didn't work.
Usually by late morning the headache was starting its faint, annoying buzz, which by afternoon reached a crescendo.
I treated the headaches with Relpax -- the only thing I'd found that worked.
I knew it wasn't right for me to be taking the stuff every day, so I trotted on back to the doctor. She put me on another prescription drug, Topamax. It's a seizure medication that is also used as a prophylactic for migraine.
I started out at the minimum dosage, and it worked pretty well at that level for a while. After a couple of months, it stopped working, so the doctor increased the dosage, and it went along that way for a while until about eight months later I was at the maximum dosage, which made me feel kind of sick all the time and eventually stopped working and I was taking it and Relpax every day and honestly, between all the side effects of both of them I don't know how I functioned.
So back I went to the doctor, who prescribed an antidepressant, tofranil.
So I tapered off the Topamax and onto the tofranil which worked, again, for about eight months, then gradually stopped being very effective and I was back to treating the headaches with Relpax every day.
I had this gut feeling that taking the Relpax was part of the problem, but I think I was too scared to put it to the test.
Let me just insert here that I had also been to a neurologist, had an MRI and ruled out brain tumors as a cause.
Also somewhere in there, I'd gone to an allergy doctor, who tested me for allergies. I tested positive for dust mites, some tree and weed pollens. He gave me samples of various allergy drugs that didn't seem to do a damn thing for my headaches.
He wanted me to get allergy shots, but wouldn't let me do the shots on my own, wanted me to pay him $20 a pop to administer the shot. I balked, both at the cost and, well, I was afraid the shots would only make the situation worse... maybe that's wrong.
Anyway.
When the tofranil stopped working, the neurologist (whom I didn't much like) prescribed a blood pressure medication, which promptly made me so sick I couldn't take it at all. She was out of town that week, so I went to my regular doctor, who said a newer, time released version of the drug would solve the problem, but it didn't.
I understand all about adjusting to medicines -- but I knew that something that made me this sick was all wrong for me.
Then a friend emailed me a link to an NPR story about a doctor who had written a book about migraines.
He had compiled a list of all the foods that could trigger migraine, and it was way beyond the usual red wine, chocolate, MSG, etc. migraine sufferers are told to avoid.
He also explained about rebound headaches -- which taking Relpax too often could cause.
So at this point, I realized my gut feeling had probably been right all along.

But instead of just stopping cold turkey, I decided to go to another doctor in search of a cure.
He told me there was no cure for headaches and I left his office with two new prescriptions -- one of them another anti-depressant.
Maybe I needed it, 'cause I drove home totally depressed.
After giving it some serious thought, I decided to get off prescriptions meds.
I did not do it in a smart way.
I stopped taking the tofranil, and after a few days when this didn't seem to be too rough, I thought I'd stop the Relpax.
Well. The reason stopping the tofranil didn't seem too rough at first was possilby because my body didn't realize I'd stopped right away or something.
But about the same day I decided to stop the Relpax, everything hit at once.
I had possibly the worst migraine of my entire life.
I was up half the night and vomited three times.
I lay on the cool tiles of my bathroom floor most of the night moaning, feeling like someone had hit me in the head with an axe.
I wished someone would hit me in the head with an axe.
There's a line from a Joan Didion essay on migraines that comes to mind at moments like these: “That no one dies of migraine seems, to someone deep into an attack, an ambiguous blessing.”
Well. I lived through that night.
And I somehow got through most of the next year free of prescription meds (though not free of headaches, unfortunately)
I tried the NPR doctor's diet, cutting out quite ordinary foods like cheese, nuts, onions and bananas, among other things.
I tried this for about three months, I think.
As far as I can tell, my triggers aren't food-related (however, the one thing I remain skittish about, avoiding like the plague, is MSG -- I always ask if they use it at restaurants)
I've explored many possible explanations for my headaches: allergies, hormones, sinusitis. I've traveled down many a treatment avenue: acupuncture, chiropractors, herbs, progesterone creams, nasal washes, reiki.
There are still others I haven't tried: biofeedback, massage, botox (don't laugh -- I've heard it helps some sufferers).
Sometimes it seemed like something was working for a month or two, but then they would get bad again -- so I never really know if something works or if the headaches just naturally ebb and flow.
This past year, I returned to occasionally using Relpax, keeping it down to two or three times per month, to avoid rebounds.
I had first thought about doing this blog a couple years ago -- just after I quit prescription meds. I thought perhaps it could help me and other sufferers find ways to cope with the misery of chronic headaches.
I never got around to it till now. Maybe because I had a pretty bad December. Eight headaches, five of them that pretty much put me out of commission for the better part of a day, another that likely would have, except I took Relpax.
And I had one yesterday. Not unexpected, as it was the first day of my period.
It wasn't even close to the worse one I'd ever had, so I tried to just tough it out. But when I woke at 5 a.m. and it was still hanging around, I caved in and took the drug.
As I'm writing this, I still have a nagging pain behind my eyes.
Perhaps the worst effect of my headaches is the self-pity, the way they make me hate my life sometimes, the fear that they will get even worse and more frequent...
I'm not the most cheerful person you'll ever meet, and headaches don't help much with that.
I'm sorry this was such a long entry. I don't know that it's of any earthly use to anyone, but I felt I needed to show the road I'd been down, some of the things I've tried.