Being a neuroscientist who succombs to a chronic neurological disorder feels… weird, to say the least. On the one hand, the lived experience of migraines is utterly miserable, to say the least. On the other, the geek in me is obviously curious about what it is that it is happening inside my brain, and the more I learn about what we know so far about the neurobiology of migraines (and there is a lot we don’t, which is why it’s still such a misunderstood and often stigmatised disease), the more… morbidly fascinating they become to me.
If it wasn’t so agonising, it would be a really interesting affair.
For now, this is my space for sharing and processing what has been happening to me when migraines became chronic. Technically (I have now learnt), migraine is always a chronic disorder, but depending on how often they occur, they’re either called episodic (up to 15 migraine days a month, which already sounds like way too many if that’s how frequent they are) or chronic (when someone has more than 15 migraine days a month). Personally, I went from a handful of easily manageable and treatable migraine attacks a year in my twenties (ie episodic migraine), to gradually more severe and longer lasting ones after turning thirty. At the worst point, I had a handful of symptom-free days a month (so well into chronic migraine territory).