Travelling with Migraine

I seem to always be going back to the other end of the country to see my family at the moment. Being sick seems to make me homesick. I’m also always missing the dog whose very much at the end of her life and will take any opportunity to see her.

But now I’m back from my latest trip (yes the dog did have lots of goodbye cuddles the night I was home) I thought I’d share some tips for travelling with migraine.

1. Make sure you have all of your medication. Painkillers and anti-sickness and anything else you may need.
2. If you have any ginger sweets or acupressure bands for sickness bring them
3. Caffeine and electrolytes can help to manage any dizziness, especially if it is associated with low blood pressure.
4. Bring headphones or earplugs
5. Sunglasses or migraine glasses are essential for dealing with potentially harsh train lighting. A sun cap may also help.
6. It’s okay to ask for help. Lifts to or from stations or airports to save energy and if you can’t do that try to spare some money on taxis.
7. If travelling by train try to make sure you have reserved seats.
8. Remember to plan in rest around the travel if you can, especially if you find travel can trigger bad migraines.
9. Use all the pain management strategies you can, even if it is just listening to music and thinking about climbing. Yes, that’s my favourite on-the-go pain management strategy.
10. Bring adhesive heat pads or any other pain patches you use to help with pain. I bring heat pads if I’m going on a long journey to help with back and shoulder pain, which can trigger or come with migraine, but you can get a range of different pads and patches to help with pain so bring what works for you!

How do you manage to travel with migraine?

Anxiety and Migraine

Anxiety is a bit of a double-edged sword with migraine. And I should know. I am full of it right now.

When you have Chronic Migraine, you are always at one stage in the migraine cycle, prodrome, aura, attack and postdrome. The prodrome and postdrome stages can cause anxiety as a symptom of migraine. That very physiological anxiety. Chest tight, heart racing, restless, but you can’t pinpoint why. I always know anxiety of this kind is a sign of a bad migraine to come. The 8+ out of 10 kind. The one that keeps you away from the world or trying to push through because what else are you supposed to do?

Migraine can also cause anxiety as a side effect. Secondary to the disorder itself. Anxiety because what if you lose your job and can’t pay rent anymore. How will you navigate the unemployed life? Anxiety because you’ve had to cancel on a friend again. What will they think? Anxiety about events that you can’t cancel. Do you have the medication days left? What if you don’t feel well enough and have to do it anyway. Your bedrooms a state how on earth will you get it tidy when you can’t tidy without passing out? You’ve not showered in too many days; what will people think?

Anxiety is part of the course with migraine, especially once chronic, but even episodic migraine can result in migraine associated anxiety.

At the end of the day, migraine is a full body assault. It’s an event in itself, and it’s bound to cause some anxiety.

So how do you deal with this anxiety?

• Distraction, distraction, distraction. This can be anything you can manage. From your favourite playlist and deep breaths. Thinking about climbing those walls that make you whole. Colouring and drawing. Half of my bed is now pens, paper and pencils so I can do some drawing and colouring from bed if I’m really unwell but well enough to do something small and quiet and need the distraction. Distraction can also include more energetic activities if your up for it.
• I know it’s always suggested, but breathing exercises can actually help a little.
• Try to thought challenge
• You can only control what you can control. The things you can’t control are terrifying and daunting, but you can only do what you can do.
• Try not to worry too much about the unknowns, however scary they might be. They are just that, however probable some unknowns are, you could waste so much energy worrying.
• Watch your caffeine intake.
• Try grounding exercises, for example, noting what you can see, hear, feel, smell and taste.
• Remember to not isolate yourself. Sometimes the anxiety will scream at you to do this but isolating yourself will only make the anxiety worse.
• Get a therapist or counsellor if you can.

Who else experiences anxiety as a result of or as part of their migraine symptoms? What do you find helps it?

Bad Days

I’m writing this after 48 very bad hours. Hours with a migraine so bad that I was breathing like I was in labour. Unable to move, unable to do anything because the pain was agonising and excruciating. Any relief was minimal. Ice, kool and soothe patches. TENS, peppermint and eucalyptus oil, medication. The weapons in my migraine kit failed to sufficiently touch the pain. The dizziness and nausea were so overwhelming that I was left completely unable to move and fatigue so extreme that I didn’t change my clothes for three days.

Days that bad are soul-destroying and honestly days where I’m taken out and bedbound for the majority of the day are all too frequent right now.

It’s isolating and lonely. Especially if you can’t even handle your phone to stay connected. With migraine pain that bad and increased ataxia in my hands as a result of the severe migraine, meaningful phone use has been an issue.

It’s also anxiety provoking. Having to call in sick yet again. What if work just think your hungover from the long weekend? The reality is you didn’t drink and spent a lot of the long weekend resting and a day and an evening of that being so incredibly unwell. Bad days to the level I’ve described earlier in this post. It’s the anxiety of worrying about whether the I’m needing the day off sick messages make any sense because ataxia and brain fog are a wonderful combination. Days when you rely on predictive text and are too foggy or in too much pain to proofread really promote that anxiety.

The bad days are guilt-inducing. Another day off sick. Could you have done something to prevent it? Your GP told you to exercise and its physio for your other two main conditions but you missed another two climbing sessions and had to skip or modify your knee and shoulder physio. You have to exist on easy to eat snacks and tortellini because it’s all you can stomach, and you don’t have the energy to make three meals a day. You know, with migraine, eating properly is important, but you are so desperately unwell that that goes out the window. You feel guilt because you feel like you should be trying harder, pushing yourself more, but in reality, you are doing your best, and that’s all you can do. It’s just that it feels like your best isn’t good enough.

These bad days are ever so frequent in my life right now, but they are just that, they are just a bad day and better days do come.

Chronic Migraine

June is Migraine awareness month. Migraine awareness month suddenly means a lot to me, because a couple of months ago I was diagnosed with Chronic Migraine and honestly it has kind of turned my life upside down. Still very much out of control and flaring.

I had my first migraine when I was 13. I wasn’t sure what it was and just thought it was a bad headache, although what I now know is an aura was definitely weird, I didn’t want to say anything about it for fear of being dramatic. I kept calm and carried on and got through the horse riding lesson I had that day. I was at the stables when it started and the show must go on.

They weren’t a huge problem until my first year of university. An endometriosis flare, gastro flare, bladder flare and trying to push through caused my migraine attacks to become more frequent. Around once or twice a week at the time. They steadily increased in frequency and over the next year and a half and I unknowingly became chronic. Often getting taken out by two week migraine attacks. I didn’t do anything about it until my migraine attacks became daily.

I responded well to Propranolol and also take Gabapentin and Amytriptyline which might have an impact on my prevention and whilst still chronic my migraine attacks stopped having such a debilitating effect on my ability to function.

They increased again in the summer of 2019, just after I graduated. But I was still somehow able to work a full time job and at one point I was climbing four times a week and socialising on top of that. I have no idea how but my then daily headaches and regular migraine attacks weren’t as debilitating back then. That and the nature of the job may have made it easier to push through that brain foggy fatigue of an attack and a postdrome.

They started to ramp up to become debilitating just before the first lockdown, but I got that under control eventually, started a masters, finished a masters. All whilst dealing with daily headaches and 2-4 weekly migraine attacks. As long as I took triptans when needed, took breaks and paced myself I managed. I even had a period of being the most headache free I can remember being just before this flare-up started.

And then we get to 2022. My migraine attacks now. Daily, debilitating, excruciating and more than just a headache. I get nausea and vomiting daily, visual auras, facial drooping and tingling in one side of the face, dizziness, brain fog, fatigue so extreme that I’ll be unable to get ready for bed or eat dinner.

It’s more than just a headache and whilst the headache can often be the worst, there are plenty of times when it really is so much more than that and the headache is not the worst part.

Migarine, especially once chronic are often difficult to treat. Personally, I’ve tried so many things to prevent migraine. Propranolol, Amytriptyline, Gabapentin, Topirimate, Candesarten, Pizotifen, Magnesium, Co-Q10, Vitimin D, Tumeric. I’ve cut out chocolate, caffeine, avocados, alcohol, dairy, gone vegan, eaten meat, been somewhere in between. I’ve also tried many things to treat an attack, sumitriptan, aspirin, paracetamol, caffeine, electrolytes, kool n soothe pads, essential oils, ice, heat, accupressure, exercise, rest, a dark room, a tens unit. If it’s affordable I’ve probably tried it.

Chronic Migraine has no quick fix and often there’s months or years of trial and error. It’s also a completely different ballgame to episodic migraine, especially when you get into the daily or near daily attack territory. Your always in one or more stages of an attack and it’s exhausting. I find my energy levels are really quite low when I’m going through a rough patch. A level of fatigue so unexplainable.

It can be life destroying, soul destroying. Too much time spent in dark rooms, missing from the things we want to be doing. Work, family time, a social life, exercise, other hobbies. Too much time spent pushing through when we are really unwell.

Having yet another migraine isn’t just an excuse. We really do have yet another migraine and if we push too much we’ll just get worse or prolong the pain.