I’ve been really struggling with migraines over the past two months while living in New York. Out of the last 30 days here, I’ve had a total of 17 “headache days”. In San Francisco, I rarely have more than one a month. And while in San Francisco a single dose of my prescription medication is sufficient to relieve my symptoms, in New York it barely makes a dent.
Migraines are complicated creatures. We still don’t understand what causes them, although we’ve observed that there are many common “triggers” that tend to bring them on. Women suffer from migraines more frequently than men because (surprise!) our fluctuating hormonal levels are a problem. Stress, lack of sleep, dehydration, hunger, and conversely consuming certain food and drink can also trigger them.
But for me, the biggest trigger is weather. If you remember your middle school earth science class, weather events come with changes to atmospheric pressure. A storm is generally a “low pressure system” whereas a bright sunny day will be a “high.”
Most people, even those with migraines, are comfortable when barometric pressure stays at about 30.0 inHg. Variations between 29.7 and 30.3 are generally tolerated.
San Francisco, with its steady weather devoid of rain for nine months a year, generally hovers right around 30. New York not only oscillates wildly because of its frequent storms, but the swings of barometric pressure go to extremes: during a particularly painful Saturday afternoon last week, it was so sudden, I felt my ears pop while sitting on a park bench. When I checked my barometric pressure app, I noticed that not only had the pressure dropped significantly, from a high of 30.45 at the beginning of the day to a low of 29.6 just a few short hours later. By the time I got home, I was in such extreme pain that I took my medicine, put an ice pack on my head, and crawled into bed at 4 in the afternoon.
And by the way, migraines aren’t just headaches: they’re complex conflagrations of neurological symptoms. I’m “lucky” enough to experience aura: visual, sensory and language symptoms that alert me of an upcoming attack.
My aura have included: intense numbness and tingling from my left temple to the middle of my left shin and down my left arm, shimmering and visual distortions in my field of vision, intense nausea, liquid draining from my ears, partial loss of vision (dark stripe through the middle or one eye being darker than the other), total loss of vision, intense vertigo lasting 2 weeks (during law school final exams!), loss of speech (my first migraine ever, which sent me to the emergency room with no insurance because I thought I was having a stroke). They’re generally worse than the migraine itself, although last weekend, I felt like someone was stabbing my right frontal lobe with an ice pick through my eye. I’ll take a little tingling and numbness over that any day.
So when people (aka my mom, my childhood friends) optimistically inquire whether I’m thinking about moving back to New York full time, I joke that I couldn’t possibly if they want me to continue being a functioning human being.
But here’s the thing: I lived here for a decade after my initial migraine diagnosis. The worst period for my migraines was during law school, and the summer studying for the New York Bar exam (which I failed the first time I took it because of… you guessed it… awful migraines that summer).
Now that I’m back, having experienced what life is like when the weather cooperates, and your meds are dialed in, I’m both awed and sympathetic to this previous version of me. She woke up knowing, that more likely than not, she would spend the day experiencing intense pain or distracting and stressful neurological symptoms. And I still graduated! With a 4.0 in my final semester! I still passed the Bar! I still successfully clerked at the New York State Supreme Court!
Then I moved to the Bay Area, and started experiencing fewer migraines. When one came on, I would cancel my plans, take my medicine, and take a break until it passed. They were rare and manageable disruptions.
But what I started noticing over the past few weeks in New York is that as my migraines intensified and became more frequent, I stopped giving myself an opportunity to rest and worked through the pain, which let me tell you, does not help them go away faster.
So could I function if I lived in New York? Yeah, I could, and I have.
But do I want to do it while experiencing migraines and their aura? Hellllll no. I’m coming back to the Bay next week. And looking forward to more headache-free days.
