Chiropractor v's Migraine

Another year and another possible cure for my migraines.  I am working my way through them all, just for you dear reader.  Today it is the turn of the chiropractor to see if he can click my migraines away for me.  It started with the usual slew of interrogations and form signings, the type of which we become accustom to when entering the realm of a new practitioner.

Once we got down to the matter in hand, my shirt was off and I was lying on my front ready to be clicked.  Only he isn't the sort of chiropractor who clicks.  He can click my back if I want, but he doesn't.  Apparently there isn't any benefit to it and other practitioners only do it for show.  I have to say that I was a little disappointed as I was expecting one huge clunk and my migraines would fade into the distance.  Ok, maybe I was hoping for a bit too much, but one can dream.  To his credit, he was very methodical in his methods.  He actually runs a migraine clinic so specialises in treating people with head pain so my hopes were high.

The aim of our sessions was to work the muscles that get tense when I get a migraine.  After a brief feel of my back, he sat me up and started by working the muscles in my cheek, but not just from the outside.  I was a little put off by this intrusion into my mouth.  Yes, that wasn't a typo.  He massaged from inside my mouth.  A very odd start to the session, but surprisingly I could feel the tension there, so kudos to the doc.

From then on things got... well even stranger.  I was expecting manipulation of my back and neck with a bit of arm bending and head clicking.  I wasn't expecting the mouth, ears, arm-pits or eyes.  This man was on a mission and that mission was to find the route cause of my migraines.  He was chasing tense muscles around my body and as soon as he felt happy that one area had been calmed, he followed the muscular path to the next. 

Let me tell you, manipulating muscles in your arm-pits is something that I would not recommend you try.  There are certain parts of your body that you know are off-limits and then there are others that you randomly discover and very quickly add to the forbidden list.  Arm-pits are now on mine.  Try as I might, I cannot find the words to portray the odd, stabbing, penetrating, pressure that felt almost as if he were inside my body.  Ok it seems that I have found some words to describe it and I will add another one for good measure.  Bizarre.

There were some interesting side plots to his quest.  My shoulders clunk when I raise and lower them.  Apparently this shouldn't happen and he was determined to stop this from happening.  I am sorry to say that he failed in this quest.  I am also sorry to say that he failed in his mission to cure my migraines.  He did change their nature somewhat.  It is hard to describe but my migraines felt different.  Like an old friend suddenly turning up all smiles riding a brand new bike when you know that they've never ridden a bike before.  Same friend... same smile... different mode of transport.

After six treatments of chase the pain around my body, the doc finally admitted that he wasn't getting anywhere and that he didn't think that it was worth me spending any more money.  Again, kudos to the doc as I was ready to hand over my hard earned cash for more hope.  But it seemed that was it.  Back to the drawing board again.

You HAVE to see these Migraine Short Videos

Have you ever had problems explaining exactly what you are suffering when you get a migraine?  People just don't seem to get it.  Well the Migraine Trust commissioned a number of short videos to try and get the message across.  I highly recommend that you pop over to their youtube site to have a look as they are all completely excellent.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMigraineTrust?feature=watch

My personal favourite "youtube in pain" as I can really associate with the let down feeling at the end.

Don't Panic!

Another month, another preventative. This time we are trying the anticonvulsant, Topiramate.  Ok, I have to start this post with a warning. I usually don't let on to exactly how things went until the end of the post. Tantalisingly stringing you all along until the very last paragraph. But this time I feel it only fair to warn you all, especially my mum, that this preventative didn't work.  Not only did it not work but the side effects were quite horrendous.  So mum, probably best not to read on.  No really, close the page down now...  I can wait...!

So here the story starts... Another month, another preventative. There is always a slight trepidation when taking new pills as to what the side effects you will encounter this time.  Tiredness always comes near the top.  Will these give you weight gain or weight loss (not that I have experienced either).  It only took two tablets before I found out and nearly two years later I am still living partly in fear of them.

Day 1 and the first tablet went down without any discernible effects.

Day 2 and tablet two.  I went to bed as usual, feeling quite rested. But then, at about 1:30am, something clicked in my brain.  It started like any other dream.  Then I got stuck at the end of a path and had to turn around, but there was no way out of the other path, or the one after that.  I like to think that I have a pretty good control over my mind, and I realised that this was a stoopid dream so I forced myself to think of something else.  But my mind started to speed up and nothing that I tried to focus on was right. The wrong path. The wrong decision. I didn't know how to correct it or make it stop.

Then with a start I jumped out of bed and stood in the corner of the room looking at the indentation my head had left in the pillow. 

"ok, ok, ok, ok" I repeated to myself, trying to gain control of my now racing mind.  I was calm on the outside but a jumbled mess on the inside.  I realised that something was wrong and that I should
be able to control it, but no thoughts were sticking as everything was happening so fast.  But only on the inside of my head.

Understandably my wife, at 1:30am, couldn't make out what was going on and suggested that I go downstairs and read for a bit.  So I did go downstairs but decided to turn on my laptop.  The calm outside of my mind then managed to squeeze a good idea passed the manic inside of my mind which was that I needed to speak to someone.  Realising that 1:30am wasn't the ideal time to be calling friends, I called the Samaritans.

I remember nothing of the conversation other than thanking the very calm and kind man at the end of it.  Each sentence I spoke to this wonderful man helped my mind to slowly calm down.  My wife heard the talking downstairs and realised that this was more than the normal kind of nightmare, came down to investigate further.  She hit the nail straight on the head by recognising that it was probably the tablets that had caused it.  Needless to say, I have never taken another Topiramate again and quickly disposed of them.

It took a good week until I was able to sleep without getting another panic attack in the small hours of the morning.  But each one was less intense and I worked out how to control my mind a little better to stop the intensity of them.  If one was coming on I would move the duvet from my feet and the cold feeling would deflect it away.  If that didn't work, then getting up and going to the toilet would reset my mind.  I continued to get them on an off for about a year, although by the end of the year they were pretty lacklustre.  I read in a book once that now the door has been opened, it can never again be shut.  One has to accept the issue and push it to the back of ones mind. 

Thankfully I have now done that and after the debacle of the botox have managed to pluck up the courage to try another tablet.  But more about that in another blog!

Allergy Tests and Diaries

Alternative health expert number one was allergy testing.  Not via the doctors as they don't like providing them.  You are what you eat so I was sure that the pain must be caused by something I was eating. Remember, I still didn't know that they were migraines, just bad headaches.

I was ushered to a low couch in a room behind a chemists and told to undress my left foot. A strange start, but what the hey! I was given a metal bar to hold whilst the specialist, and I use the term sparingly here, held my foot on her lap. The metal bar was connected to a strange contraption containing test tubes of clear liquid. A wire connected this to a metal pen which completed the contraption. Each vial of liquid was in turn placed into the main hole. For each one, she moved the metal pen down the inside of my big toe as if she were drawing a line from top to bottom. Each stroke made the machine emit a whining sound which would progressively get higher. Apparently, the degree of change in sound was dependent on the resistance between my hand, the vial of liquid and my toe. The higher the whine, the less resistance which was good (I think). If the whine petered out before reaching it’s zenith it meant that there was something in my body that blocked the signal. That would be what I was allergic to.  Or it could just mean that she didn't move the pen quite as far, thus giving the impression of an allergy (I know, I must stop being a cynic, but I just can't help myself).

It didn’t go that well and I did feel a little bit sorry for her.  The first item of resistance was pork. That was a bad start as I am Jewish and therefore have never eaten pork. I could see the quizzical look on her face as one eyebrow lifted slightly. however she bravely moved on to the next vial. Lots of high whines ensued until the next low whine which was caffeine. Another problem as I don’t drink coffee, or tea, or coke, or anything with caffeine in .
“Are you sure?” she asked, hoping that I might have forgotten about a recent caffeine binge.
"Nope, not a drop". I answered and added "Sorry," as I felt guilty that I hadn't been drinking coffee by the bucket load. She needed to finish on a high with a safe win whine and got it with grass seeds. I do have hey fever, but then so do a lot of people.

As the test came to an end she seemed to forget the questionable results and advised that I go on a wheat free diet for one month and keep a food diary. I left the little room and entered the chemist on the way out and happened to overhear an older couple chatting about which wheat free items would be best for them. I wonder how many people with many varied ailments were advised to go on this same diet.  I tried the diet and it wasn’t as difficult as it seemed, but it made no difference to the headaches.

The diary was a help though. It identified that I have an intolerance to dairy which I never knew about before. I just thought that I was a naturally flatulent person! Cutting out cheese also seemed to help reduce the frequency of the headaches. So maybe the treatment was worth the money after all!

Migraines at a young age

I am pretty sure that I have suffered from migraines since I was a kid.  They were only self-diagnosed as such 5 years ago, but I know that I suffered with them for a long time before that.  The memory does fade slightly as to when they started.  I remember going to the doctor with my mum as a kid as I had jaw ache a lot.  Mum thought that maybe I had too many teeth all vying for space or that there was a problem with the alignment of my jaw.  The doctor we saw was a doctor from the old school.  A very old school.  He was like an old, kind, but misguided wizard.  After sitting behind his large wooded desk and listening to our story, he turned to face a plethora of ancient books, some without names, which covered the entire wall behind him (at least that's how I remember it as a kid).  From one shelf behind him he dragged out a particularly large book, blowing the dust from the top before opening the cover.  He moistened his index finger and thumb by licking them with his parched tongue, which looked as old as the books.  Peering over the top of his glasses he slowly turned the large pages.  By contrast, my current doctor googles for answers, although I am not commenting on which is the better method.

His conclusion was that I grind my jaw at night and would need a mouth guard to stop this from happening.  I knew that I wasn't grinding my jaw but was so in awe of this caricature of himself, that my mouth refused to budge from being tight shut.  Thankfully, whilst driving home, my mother listened and we never did get the mouth guard for me to wear at night to stop this mythical grinding from taking place.

Fast forward a decade or two. I can't remember getting much pain after that until I was in my 20's.  By then I just thought that I was getting headaches.  Must be too much work, or too little sleep.  The childhood jaw ache was long forgotten about.  Over the counter drugs never even dented the pain.  I wasn't the sort to go to the doctors, but in hindsight, that is exactly what I should have done.  It got to the stage where I had more days in pain than not.  I learned to deal with it and get on with my life.  I worked my way though many kooky methods to just to try and get a clear day without the pain.  Run to the top of the stairs and grab hold of the banister. Swing up and down and round and round to stretch my shoulder joints and pull out the pain.  Bang my head against the wall to knock the broken bit back into place.  I used to have an old computer where you had to hit the side of it to make it turn on.  I guess that I was applying that same logic to my head.  Needless to say, these methods never worked.

The worry was that it might be more than a simple headache.  I would analyze myself for other symptoms.  My vision was always clear, although it did hurt to re-focus from near to far.  My hearing was always clear and noise never made the pain worse or better.  No tingling in my fingers or toes.  Heart beat strong and unwavering.  Fitness level as good as it ever had been.  I was stuck in limbo, waiting for the pain to go, or something else to go wrong.  Always scared to visit the doctorsas they might tell me something that I don't want to hear.

Thus began a long and ongoing treck to find the perfect cure.  What I did do was visit alternative health experts.  I use the term expert sparingly and will explain why in my next blog...