Kerrie over at The Daily Headache was kind enough to answer a question for me about her experience of migraine prodrome. She mentioned in a recent post that she woke up in a good mood, which was immediately followed by a migraine. I asked her if she found that a good mood often precedes migraine, which frequently happens to me, and she replied that she does in fact often feel an almost pathological increase in energy before an attack. (“Pathological” is my word, not hers.)
This prompted me to write the following, which I have edited only slightly for posting here. I hope it is not against the ethics of blogging to cross post a comment I made on someone else’s blog to my own blog, but I really want to share this with friends and family who might not be familiar with The Daily Headache. (If you are reading my blog and suffer from migraines, and you are not reading TDH, run, don’t walk, over there now. In my mind it is the best migraine blog in existence.)
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I am often more talkative than usual when I’m about to have a migraine – but this is hard to measure, because I’m always talkative. The difference is that, during the prodrome, I a) know I’m being more talkative than usual, and I even wonder if it’s annoying my husband, but I can’t stop myself, and b) feel that all this talking is kind of tiring (even though I feel otherwise quite cheerful), but I can’t stop myself.
I wouldn’t say that my normal self is morose, but I am easily annoyed and given to ranting about whatever irritating thing has happened to me during the day. Being straightforwardly cheerful and positive isn’t me – it’s like someone else has taken over my head.
Migraine is a very weird disease, isn’t it? Not only do you get pain, you get auras (well, some of us do). Not only do you get auras, you get cravings. Not only do you get cravings, you get personality changes. Not only do you get personality changes, you get bizarre physical symptoms that, on the surface, seem to have nothing to do with your head. It would be fascinating if it weren’t so painful – it’s almost like I want to observe someone else experiencing migraine. Except I wouldn’t wish it on any real person. Maybe I want to observe it in some character in a book – except if I weren’t a migraine sufferer I’d never believe anyone could go through something so strange.
Migraine aura picture from 
“The difference is that, during the prodrome, I a) know I’m being more talkative than usual, and I even wonder if it’s annoying my husband, but I can’t stop myself, and b) feel that all this talking is kind of tiring (even though I feel otherwise quite cheerful), but I can’t stop myself.”
I can so empathise with this; I can hear the torrent coming out of my mouth; I know I’m often talking rubbish about nothing in particular, and talking much faster than normal, but it’s like something took over the wire in between my brain and my mouth. One time where the phrase ‘engage brain before opening mouth’ is really so appropriate. Except, I can’t. I wonder if there’s an explanation for this, other than the increased neurological activity – I guess all that energy has to go somewhere!
Found you via your comment on my blog, by the way. Thanks for visiting!
Comment by Miss Vertigo — July 16, 2007 @ 6:12 pm |