Surrendering to Pain

Nobody likes pain, and everyone’s pain is unique to that person. So everything I write here is from my own personal experience.

From about the age of 12 onward I had migraines. Before that age, I would have really bad headaches that touched on migraine, but didn’t have full blown ones yet. I can remember being on the playground around 4^th grade and just having this pulsing pain in my head. Why I never mentioned it to my parents I have no idea. That was around the time I was starting to really draw inward and didn’t talk much to anyone.

Around 12, though, was my first true migraine. I had no idea what was going on with me. I had never had this kind of pain before. It was evening, and my parents were up the street at the neighbor’s house socializing. I was walking up and down the street in the dark (it was a very rural area, no streetlights) agonizing with the pain and wishing my parents would come home. My grandparents lived with us, but I hadn’t said anything to them about what was going on with me. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and was sitting on my bed with my head in my hands and crying hysterically. My grandpa passed by my doorway and said “What’s the matter with her?” I think my grandma was in the room with me and she simply said “She has a headache.”

I don’t remember much more. But from that point on I was on one kind of med after the other. Nothing helped when I was in the midst of a migraine. I had x-rays done of my head. We’re talking early 60s and I guess nobody knew what to do about this kind of thing. I never heard the word “migraine” until years later. There was one time I was in the midst of a marathon migraine and my mom got the doctor to meet us on a Saturday at the office. I was in my nightgown. My mom held me while I stood up so the doctor could pull my panties down in the back and give me a shot in the rear.

Over the years the meds got better, but would never entirely cancel out the pain. When it got to be more than I could handle, Marv would take me to the ER and they would give me a shot. It got to the point where the doctor would agree to meet us at his office to give me the shot and save us the cost of an ER visit.

At some point, I realized that fighting the pain was the worst thing I could do. Crying made it so much more painful. I learned to lie down in bed and let the waves of pain wash over me. Surrendering to the pain seemed to lessen the impact. I was still in horrendous pain, but I was much calmer. The tears would flow, but I would not be sobbing. One time when the kids were little, Marv took me to the doctor’s office for a shot and had the kids with him. I was just sitting there with dark glasses on, silent and not moving, with tears running down my face. A friend of ours happened to be there as well and took one look at me and decided she and her husband were going to take our kids for a couple of days.

Thankfully, by the time I hit my 40s the migraines were almost a thing of the past. I didn’t have another migraine until the kidney stone incident of 2 years ago, and haven’t had another one since that.

The pain of the different surgeries I’ve had was a different kind of animal entirely. My mental attitude was different and with enough Norco I could escape a lot more easily than with a migraine. As I said earlier, no one likes pain. But I can tell you from my experience, migraine is one of the worst of all.