H eadaches, their causes and cures, are a national preoccupation if current periodicals are any indication. I have read articles about all phases of headaches, however most are written by or from interviews with doctors. If they themselves are not headache sufferers, they cannot possibly provide the insight necessary to stimulate positive action in ridding oneself of this disabling symptom.
Having suffered from violent migraine headaches since the age of 13, it took me 15 years to really do something about them. Perhaps it took the medical world that long to offer me something I could do. The migraines started with what I have always called a "siege." Total blindness that lasted about ten minutes was followed by a debilitating three-day headache: two days on one side and one day on the other. Diarrhea, vomiting and a general lack of equilibrium accompanied the headache itself. I suffered almost continuous headaches of varying intensity for the next month. They finally tapered off to only one every four to six weeks and did not coincide with my menstrual period or anything else we could think of.
I do have icthyosis, an extreme dryness of the skin with deficient perspiration and oil glands, which causes me to be extremely susceptible to heat stroke. If I become overheated, I experience fainting, vomiting and blinding headaches. I can remember the first on these headaches from as early as five years of age and, as I got older, the seemingly causeless migraines began.
In September 1965, at the age of 17, I started college at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. During my second year, in January 1967, another siege of headaches began. At the time, I was supporting myself with three part-time jobs and, additionally, working for my parents in their small business on weekends. I refused to give up any time I could spend with my boyfriend, Ken (who later became my husband). By mid February, I was almost completely incapacitated by the headaches, cutting most of my classes and failing for lack of study. I reported to the University Health Service whose kindly doctors put me on Valium - six tables a day. I continued going to work, but not school, and lost the next ten days of my life. I remember only brief fragments of that time.
My roommates were very concerned about me and usually did not leave me alone, speaking to me often just to make sure I was all right. About a week after taking the first Valium, I tried to study in the evening with one of my roommates. Sharron checked periodically to see how I was doing and we discovered that for an hour and a half I had read the same sentence over and over and over again. The next evening, Thursday, I fell asleep while eating dinner, my face falling forward into a plate of scalding spaghetti. My roommates had to pull me out of the spaghetti and put cold packs on my burned face. I felt no pain from the burns. It was a frightening evening and I quit taking the prescribed Valium, vowing never to take another tranquilizer no matter how long I lived. About noon the following day I set out again for the Health Service about a mile and a half away, assuring my roommates that I was fine. At approximately 1:15 p.m., I found myself one block from home and though I knew where I was, I didn't know why I was there or how I had gotten there. I returned home.
Friday morning my roommates, Norma and Sharron, were more concerned than ever and walked me to the Health Service in the morning, checked me in at the reception desk and sat me down to wait my turn. We were there at 8:00 a.m. and Sharron went on to class while Norma went to work. At 5:00 p.m. a nurse came to tell me I would have to leave since the Health Service was closing. I had no memory of that entire day. I had spent nine hours in that chair without moving. Saturday, Norma walked me back to the Health Service, checked me in and waited until I was called, accompanying me right to the doctor's door. He advised me to either quit work or quit school but, unfortunately, quitting either meant quitting both since my jobs were work-study jobs.
Meanwhile, Norma made an appointment for me to see Dr. Alice Bahrs, a private practitioner in Corvallis. Monday morning she left work in order to accompany me there. Dr. Bahrs knew that a young woman away from home in a college town and going to a female doctor had to be pregnant. Although I assured her that I was not, her attitude was disbelieving and condescending. She gave me a prescription for a nasty little pill that is to be dissolved under the tongue while lying down for half an hour. She also advised me to quit work or school and, in the meantime, have my eyes checked and an EEG run since I complained of some sort of vision impairment during the headaches.
My vision test indicated no abnormalities other than a slightly enlarged blind spot. My EEG was normal. I withdrew from school and quit all three part time jobs. I began job-hunting in earnest and was hired by the City of Corvallis. During the following eight years, I changed jobs several times, moved several times, got married and had two children. The sieges occurred only about once a year although severe headaches were not uncommon.
The birth of our second child occurred during a very difficult time in our lives. Ken was not working and finances were strained to the limit and more. Our daughter, though not actually colicky, cried incessantly. For some reason, she was unable to sleep. Our pediatrician was thorough in his tests and supportive of both Ken and me but the fact remained that our new daughter screamed all night. She was then overtired and screamed for long periods of the day, as well. It was only my husband and I who were totally exhausted. When she was about three months old, I was overcome by another sieve of headaches. I could not pick up my infant daughter to change her if she was in the playpen. I called in my neighbors for that simple task. I would change her and they would have to put her back in the playpen. I spent the major part of several days sitting on the bathroom floor with my arms wrapped around the toilet bowl. I lacked sufficient energy to even get up and when I tried I was overcome by dypsnea.
Worried, I called one of the finest neurologists in the State of Oregon only to find out he was a pediatric neurologist. Without seeing me, though, he referred me to another neurologist, Dr. Reid Wilson in Portland, Oregon, who did a psychological profile, blood work and a new EEG. He ruled within 95% that my headaches were not caused by a physical or biological abnormality. Because of a family history of migraines, Dr. Wilson diagnosed me as having "classic migraines" which have no specific causes and no known cures He prescribed a lifetime of medication, taken daily, with other medications to be taken when I experienced a headache. I was healthy and reluctant to condemn myself to a lifetime of drugs even if a doctor prescribed them. I was determined to find some other method of treatment.
During that time, my sister read an article about a research project being conducted by Dr. Duncan and his wife, a psychiatric nurse, at Northwest Psychiatric in Portland, OR. Their project involved using biofeedback to significantly improve the lives of migraine sufferers. At my insistence, Dr. Wilson contacted the Duncans who declined to accept me as a patient. Their research subjects suffered from tension migraines that were easily treatable. I was insistent and finally, they agreed to test me to see if I might be an acceptable candidate.
An afternoon of psychological testing and personal interviews with both my husband and me followed. Although skeptical, they reluctantly accepted me into their program. I had some advantages: I already was very much aware of the "aura" which preceded the headaches, I knew exactly where they started, and I knew beyond a doubt that I could change the normal functioning of my body if someone would just teach me how. A friend I met in college learned to successfully control his own heartbeat in order to be classified 4F by the army when he registered for the draft (we were in the middle of the Viet Nam Conflict and he did not want to serve). He had demonstrated his ability to me several times and I knew that if he could do it, so could I. Additionally, I had the incentive to get better. My own mother had spent many weekends of my childhood sitting on the stairwell landing with her head in her hands, preventing the family from participating in many activities. I did not intend to be reduced to such a sorry, negative memory in my children's minds.
I was painfully honest with the Duncans and myself. It was necessary to do a great deal of soul searching to see if the migraines were self-induced for some reason: to punish my family or myself or to get attention. I believed that none of those reasons existed and the Duncans concurred. I explained that I did not expect miracles, particularly with my family history. I was hoping to learn to be able to function at some reduced yet still acceptable level during the headaches. I wanted to remain loving and supportive of my family and instill in them confidence in their ability to enjoy themselves without guilt even if I was unable to join them. I wanted to be able to quietly care for my needs without being a burden to my husband or my children . . . or my neighbors. I also wanted to be able to care for my own children. As instructed, I began keeping meticulous records of any headaches I had, both their duration and intensity measured on an hour-by-hour basis.
Thus motivated, I began the biofeedback program. I was eager to learn and put into practice anything they could teach me. Biofeedback, however, is really a self-learning process prompted by a proctor. Two days a week I went to Northwest Psychiatric and was hooked up to machines for one hour. My sister graciously cared for my children so I could go. Mrs. Duncan guided me through relaxation techniques and taught me how to recognize my own body's responses to physiological changes. I gradually learned to control those responses and change them. Every day, I practiced at home and Ken had to support my efforts by taking care of the girls while I did so.
Ken, too, was skeptical when I began. He had already had to deal with my headaches for over ten years. He recalled times early in our relationship when we had left to go fishing only to turn around and return home without getting out of the car because I had become sick with a headache. Often he would need to stop the car while I vomited on the side of the road. He believed that I had no control over the headaches and did not believe as strongly as I that I could take control, but he was willing to help me try. The Duncans had warned us that it would be a family affair and that without Ken's full support, I would not be able to succeed. They were right, but succeed I did, and much of the credit goes to Ken.
With hard work and much practice, I was successful in reaching my goals. In fact, I went far beyond any goals anyone had anticipated. My work with the Duncans over a six-week period met all of my hopeful expectations and exceeded theirs. I continued to practice what I had learned until it became my new automatic response to physiological changes. Within one year, I was completely free of migraine headaches and have remained so for eighteen years.
About three months after my work with the Duncans, they invited me to speak at a symposium for medical doctors at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although not completely headache-free then, I was already phenomenally successful even as a sufferer of classic migraines, not the typical tension migraines. I spoke briefly to a sea of cold, disbelieving faces. One doctor stated unequivocally that it was impossible, as she had read and heard, to control the temperature of one's hands and asked if this was a technique used in the Duncans' research. Although we had no thermometers to measure exact temperatures, I offered to sit next to her while we listened to the next speaker and demonstrate my ability. It was a technique that I had practiced often with the help of the biofeedback machines. I had made a game of it to see how fast I could raise the temperature of my hands. I knew that a realistic expectation was ten degrees in three minutes. Since I had been nervous speaking, my hands were extremely cold and pale when we began. I put my hands in my lap, turned my thoughts inward and relaxed. When the next speaker had finished, my hands were toasty hot and almost red. Seeing is not always believing when dealing with closed-minded people. The doctor, holding my hands, wanted to know how I did it and demanded a complete explanation. I could only tell her that I didn't worry about the how, I simply did it. With no more scientific answer than that, she continued to insist that it was impossible.
I am still subject to the violent headaches associated with heat stroke, but I have an air-conditioned house and car and I stay out of the heat as much as possible. If, for some uncontrollable reason, I become too hot and do experience a headache, I have learned to function slowly and quietly. Sometimes it is necessary to lie down in a darkened room, but my door is always open to my children and they are comfortable coming to share their activities with me quietly. I smile; I hug them; I listen. These are the important things for them to remember about Mom having a headache. I actually have plain ordinary headaches on occasion, also. I no longer panic, however, imagining a coming migraine. Now I just take a couple of ibuprofen and complain, like most people.
Ken has become the most avid supporter of my biofeedback experience. It changed my life and, consequently, changed our lives. He appreciates the changes. Although we still need to consider the consequences of heat (particularly in the summer), we no longer fear that I will get a headache. Surprisingly, Ken himself has since had three migraine headaches. After the first one, he was terror-stricken at the thought of a recurrence each time he got a headache. Even knowing that I had gained control over mine, he felt totally helpless in his ability to cope. Fortunately, he has not had one in years and we believe that we can attribute those isolated three to serious allergy flare-ups.
Unfortunately for most people, many medical doctors consider only medicine and surgery as acceptable treatments. They are wonderful resources, but we have within us the capability to overcome many symptoms if we look diligently for those who can teach us to use our own internal resources. We need to use all of the available resources to maintain healthy bodies and minds. Ignoring some because of ignorance can lead to mediocre results when we should be able to expect the best. The mighty migraine no longer rules in our home as it once did, it has been dethroned and banished. (May, 1995)
