Worse Than Cancer

One of the many challenges migraine sufferers deal with is trying to convey the migraine experience to friends and family who are unfamiliar with the array of problems migraines cause. For the most part, they just won't understand the level of pain that a migraine causes. If all you've ever experienced in your life is an occasional headache that is treated easily with a couple of ibuprofen, you're not likely to get what a migraine is actually like.

To illustrate that point, one day I was reading an online support forum for cancer patients. I noticed that people talked about their nausea, bowel problems, neuropathy, and fatigue, yet never mentioned the words that are so common on migraine talk forums. No mention of words such as "agony." What you find on cancer forums is that people are scared they are going to die. On migraine forums they often are wishing they could die. Here's a quote from a migraine forum: "I live with chronic pain and fatigue. I've lost most of my friends. I can't work. The medical community has been less than helpful. I have gone down every route possible on my own to improve my symptoms. I welcome my death I'm so tired of being tortured." Whoa. That sounds nothing like what you find on any other type of chat room. Other people want to live, migraine sufferers want to die. Of course, what they really want is to end their pain, to finally feel relief and not to worry that it might strike again, at any minute of their life.

But spouses, friends, and family members have no way of understanding the depth of the agony. It does stretch the mind to the breaking point at times, so they can be excused. After all, you're talking about a disease that is worse even than end-stage cancer. People have no frame of reference for something like that. So of course they often lack empathy for what the migraine sufferer is going through. They don't see the pain, so to them it isn't real. They expect you to function just the same as you would on a day that you don't have a migraine. At the onset of the migraine all they notice is a sudden quietness, which probably just seems taciturn and bitter to them. Then you slink off into your room and disappear, not wanting to talk to anyone, or hear loud voices, yet the kids still run around like crazy, still come in asking for help finding their toys and crying loudly about their brother or sister pulling their hair. And if you're grumpy, you still get the blame for being a grouch. Because no one really knows what a migraine is doing to your body and mind. The damage it does to family life, relationships with friends and professional life can be profound, often devastating. Divorces, lost custody, the end of a career, financial ruin are all tragic, yet frequent ends to the migraine saga.

So is the solution to end the stigma of migraine? Get people better educated, more informed and therefore more empathetic? Well, maybe. Or maybe that is a part of the solution, but for me, the real solution lies in finding treatments that really prevent and control migraine pain. And I believe that it is possible. I believe that people do not have to live in the kind of suffering they are used to. There are natural, herbal formulas out there (and no, I'm not talking about feverfew or butterbur) that actually work where pharmaceuticals fail.

Ranking: 5