Welcome to Broken Masterpieces and to my very first blog post!

My goal with this blog is to encourage those who struggle with chronic illnesses with what I have learned in dealing with mine. With that in mind, I figured my story would be a great place to start.

A doctor once told me that I keep him humble. At that time, we had no clue that I was dealing with a very rare and complicated form of migraine. But, as all good stories do, mine should start at the beginning.

In the Beginning

I was first diagnosed with migraines when I was six. These migraines were the quintessential migraine: one-sided head pain, aura, nausea, the works. I spent a lot of time lying in a dark room with an ice pack on my head. My parents also changed my diet to eliminate all caffeine and sugar for a while. This diet change along with chiropractic care helped to control the migraines for a long time.

When I reached high school, I developed cluster and “ice pick” headaches. I was able to alleviate these headaches with a regular sleep pattern, a caffeine-free diet, and a correction to my hormone balances. I had fairly good control over them when I went off to college.

College was good. Even with all of the stresses that come with the experience, I kept my migraines under control. I was even able to go to China to teach English for a month the summer of 2008 before my senior year.

Mystery Sets in

After I returned from China, I had four weeks before I had to be back to school. It was my last year, and I was eager to get the year underway. But I had developed a sinus infection. I wanted my “senior-itis” to be the only “-itis” I took back to school. So I went to the doctor to get an antibiotic to knock the infection out of my system. Since the first Z-pack didn’t work, the physician’s assistant prescribed a stronger antibiotic in the Z-pack family.

I had taken two doses when I noticed I didn’t have very good balance. I figured it was the fluid starting to break up and went about my business. I had just sat down to eat some chicken noodle soup when my right arm started to feel very heavy, as did my head, and I could no longer hold them up.

My parents took me to the ER where the doctors determined it must be an allergic reaction to the antibiotic, gave me a steroid shot (which helped), and sent me home. However, the same thing happened again the next morning at breakfast. My arm and head got really heavy and slowly drooped to the table because I couldn’t hold them up any more. Since I was already set to follow up with my primary care physician, I saw him first. He sent me straight back to the ER because I looked like I was having a stroke. This fact and the fact that I had just been in China caused the ER neurologist to admit me.

The doctors ran almost every test imaginable, both neurological and infectious disease-related, in the first 36 hours of my hospital stay, but nothing showed up. On my third day in the hospital, I had the worst migraine I have ever had in my life. I couldn’t keep any food down, every little bit of light felt like it was slicing my head wide open, and the morphine the nurses gave me didn’t touch the pain at all. The next day, the migraine was gone, and I began to gain my strength back. I was sent home after five days in the hospital because all of my tests came back negative. The doctor told me I had conversion disorder and there was nothing wrong with me.

I was blessed, however, to be able to follow up with a neurologist who did not believe I had conversion disorder. He continued to search for an answer to what was wrong with me while also admitting he didn’t know. For years, this neurologist and my general care physician had no idea what was wrong with me and were controlling symptoms as best they could. My parents even took me to the Mayo Clinic. Twice. Even those neurologists couldn’t determine what was causing my neurological problems.

The Long-Awaited Diagnosis

Finally, my neurologist at home stumbled on a possible cause. Six months after my first attack, I had developed seizure-like episodes. No EEG or any other imaging ever showed anything.

My neurologist prescribed a migraine medication to see if it would help combat these episodes, and this medication worked not only to ward off the seizure episodes but also for what my family had termed my “floppiness.” He therefore tentatively diagnosed me with complicated migraines.

This diagnosis was confirmed by a headache specialist in 2015 when I had another major attack. Because I show symptoms of cluster headaches and three different types of migraine including hemiplegic migraine (the cause of my “floppiness”), my current specialist has formally diagnosed me with complicated migraines. As she puts it, I’m just complicated. I have also seen a seizure specialist who has determined that my seizures are a symptom of my hemiplegic migraines.

So, that’s my migraine story. At first, episodes were years apart, and I could work around them. I was teaching high school English, and I loved it. But I was teaching in a small Christian school, and every time I was out with my migraines, I never knew how long I would be out. That placed a lot of strain on my school.

I finally decided after having two hemiplegic episodes within two years that it was not fair to continue to put my employer and my students in that position of uncertainty, and I resigned. Now, I have no idea what I am going to do next, but I am praying about it, and I know God will direct me to where He needs me. My job right now is to trust Him.

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