A Visit From an Old Friend

Having multiple chronic illnesses is like having friends who live out of town that like to pop by unannounced.

Sometimes it will be a long while between visits. So long in fact you almost kind of forget they exist. And then one day, BAM, there they are, standing at your front door with a duffle bag and a big smile, asking to sleep on your couch.

And you never know how long they’ll stay. One day? 3? A week? A month? Will you have to research activities for them to do? Cook them dinner when you come home from work? Will you have to take time off to entertain them? Or will it be a quick visit, a dinner on a business trip, here and then gone off into the ether until the next visit.

While my pelvic pain and PCOS are my ride or die, day in and day out companions, migraines are an old friend who lives in a different time zone.

I had my first migraine when I was 17, the week before the junior prom. I had never experienced that type of throbbing, pulsing, migratory pain. The nausea and auras, phantom smells, numb lips, trouble speaking, dizziness. My anxious mind decided I had a brain tumor. That first headache lasted for 4 days before subsiding and I didn’t get another visit from migraine until the day after my 18th birthday, 5 months later. That headache decided to move in with me for three months. Entertaining it took so much of my time and energy my guidance counselor had to write a special letter to the colleges I applied to explaining why my grades had taken a sudden turn for the worse.

After taking my headache on a special trip to the neurologist and feeding them a steady diet of Propranolol and Sumatriptan, they decided they needed some space, packed up their bags and left, for days and then weeks and then months at a time.

For the past 10 years, Migraine’s visits have been sporadic. They pop in every few months, sometimes for just brief 30 minute chats, sometimes for just an afternoon, a glimpse of an aura and a wave of dizziness. Every 4–6 months, they really settle in for a good weekend visit. We spend the time curled in the cool, silent dark of my apartment, napping with an ice pack on my forehead. And then they pack up and head on home, across the country.

Our relationship had been loving, if distant, for most of my 20’s. I was aware of their existence every morning when I took my medicine and every night when I swallowed my magnesium tablets, when I remembered to take them, maintaining our relationship on level with watching each other’s Instagram stories and sending occasional memes.

While my oldest chronic illness relationship, I always assumed they were in a different social sphere from my chronic pain and PCOS. But recently, they must have met through some mutual friend of their own, and decided to plan a nice long visit together.

A few years ago, after being forced to go through an insurance induced breakup with my neurologist of 6 years, I began seeing a new doctor, who asked me how often I was having headaches. It was in this moment that I realized that I’d been having headaches almost daily. She then asked me how often I took painkillers and it was then that I learned about rebound headaches, also known as medical overuse headaches.

These types of headaches occur in people already predisposed to migraines and tensions headaches and can happen when you’ve been overusing painkillers, even over the counter ones.

“You should take a break from painkillers now until you’ve broken the cycle, and then limit your intake,” this doctor told me, which made me laugh. Didn’t she know chronic pain was my roommate now? They weren’t going anywhere. This would be like working from home with them sitting next to me on the couch all day, no breaks at all.

In the two years since this hysterical suggestion, I have only developed more chronic pain. In the last year alone I’ve been experiencing flare ups of joint pain and swelling and have been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, conditions that are often co-morbid with PCOS, chronic pelvic pain and migraines.

Migraines, apparently and without my consent, moving in as well and demanding more attention. But when I thought maybe migraine would be gone for a little while, they’d decide to pop back in for dinner.

Over the last 12 months, I can count on one hand the days I haven’t had a headache. I’ve tried acupuncture, nerve blocks, gabapentin, more different types of painkillers than I can count, started new medications and stopped older ones. But still, the headaches keeping coming.

Meanwhile, the other pain hasn’t let up. Most days, I have a veritable clique of conditions hanging out with me as I go through my work day. When I finally drag myself home at the end of the day, I am so exhausted I’m lucky if I can do more than collapse in bed, my fiancee left to look after me.

It appears that I now have some uninvited and unwanted roommates, old friends who have settled in for the long haul.