The end of my migraines

Today marks the third anniversary of the end of my migraine headaches.

That's right.

Three years ago tonight, a migraine to end all migraines ended.

And I've not had even a hint of a headache since.

Bizarre, really, when one thinks that, since the age of 12, I've suffered terribly from migraines.

When my little chickadee was a wee chickadee, she dreaded coming home from school to hear her mother in bed, being sick, and responding "I don't know" to the simplest of questions.  (I swear, had she asked me my name, I would have responded, 'I don't know.')

At one point, my doctor had me on an anti-migraine medication that was so powerful, it affected my hair (I was not able to have perms, colour my hair etc).  The vomiting episodes were so violent that I burned my esophagus. (It seemed there were times it was coming out of every orifice of my head!)

Suffice to say, it was not a fun time.

We eventually found out, through trial and error and because I kept a food diary, that peanut butter was one of my main triggers.  I had been unknowingly keeping myself in a migraine state (I looooooooooove peanut butter).

There ended my consumption of peanut butter and/or peanuts; that was in about 1985 or thereabouts.

It was a truly sad day when I had to admit that I could not eat my beloved peanut butter.

We had also learned that chocolate was another of my triggers but that wasn't difficult for me to avoid since I had never been a chocolate lover -- with the exception of cherry chocolates which Santa would bring me every Christmas (and thereby induce a major migraine attack!).

Once I eliminated my trigger foods, the frequency of my migraines was significantly reduced. Then, my doctor finally found a magic bullet that worked well for me when a headache did strike. I could take a Maxalt RPD at any point in the headache's progress and stop it dead in its tracks. Finally, after more than 20 years of no relief, I could function like a normal person most of the time.

Fast forward to January 10, 2008.

I was at that time in about day five of a horrid migraine -- it just wouldn't quit and it wouldn't respond to any of the remedies that had been working quite nicely for the previous seven years or so.

Now admittedly, it was a high stress period and I figured I just had to ride it out.

The phone call came shortly after 8:00pm that evening.

"Hi Bon," my sister said through her tears, "she's gone."

And at that precise second, my migraine stopped.

I've been eating peanut butter on my toast every morning for almost a year now; and Santa brought me cherry chocolates this past Christmas again. Changes to barometric pressure that previously would have guaranteed a migraine don't even get a twitch out of me now.

My sister says that my mother took my migraines with her that evening; that she gave me in death what she wouldn't give me in life.

I don't know if what my sister thinks is even possible.

But this date marks three years since that call, and it's also precisely three years since my last migraine.