Cluster Headaches and Babies

Ever since I was 20, I would get these terrible migraines, they would last for hours and feel so intense I felt as though I would die from the pain. These happened for years without going to the doctor to find out what was going on. I figured I had really bad migraines that came and went without any medical diagnosis. I was in my 20’s, completely disengaged with my mind and body. As the years passed the headaches got worse and I started to look into what I had. Of course I self diagnosed myself years before going to a neurologist. I had cluster headaches. They attacked the right side of my head for hours, causing debilitating pain with no relief in sight. I would take my Mom’s migraine medicine, sumatriptan, and if caught in time, the headache would evaporate shortly after taking the meds, if not, I would be stuck in my own personal hell for what seemed like an eternity. My husband, then boyfriend, took care of me during these attacks and saw first hand how awful these headaches were. But when I got pregnant for the first time, I had skipped my headache cycle, (typically ever 6 months I had this headache for a full month straight). I was headache free for my baby’s nine month gestational period. I was so relieved since the medication was not good for pregnancy. But as soon as my babies came out, three of them two years apart, the headaches came back with a vengeance. I did finally get help from a neurologist, but because cluster headaches are just not that common, I stuck with triptans and many other medications to get me through these months. Nothing worked. I was incapacitated for 2 months out of the year raising 3 kids. I went through days wondering if it were better if I just didn’t exist anymore. I begged my husband to take the pain away, more meds, more research, more time worried about when the next cycle was coming, all the while feeding three boys, nursing, getting them dressed, working through their bumps and bruises, walks to the park, entertaining them, bath time, reading to them. I always wonder how much their little eyes saw or their little ears heard as I cried in my room. Raising children is a journey, raising them with chronic pain is another. As the years went by, I tried Psilocybin as a form of medication and it worked for a while. But timing was key and I was always wondering when to take the next dose before the next cycle was due to hit. For the first 14, 12, and 10 years of my boys’ lives, I dueled with being a mother and a cluster headache patient. Thankfully, I found another neurologist that introduced me to another drug (Emgality) and I have been cluster headache free (aside from 1 cycle) for almost 3 years! As I crawl out of almost 27 years of head pain, I stand back and realize the struggle of raising children while in and out of pain. Whatever that pain may be, whether it’s depression, physical pain, anxiety, it takes an enormous amount of energy to mask it, to continue walking the path, to ask for help. As I look at it from the other side, I see that women tend to routinely mask their pain to give their children as much as they can possible give. I also look back on wanting to leave this earth when the pain was so bad, but the only way I stayed was for my boys, they kept me here.