Migraine Headaches and M/s

I have migraine headaches. Have had them all my life, since I was just a little bitty thing. The earliest ones that I remember started when I was about 5 years old. I'd tell my parents that my neck hurt. They'd put me to bed, and I'd simply lie there in the dark and cry miserably from the awful pain. As I got older, the headaches got worse.

Migraine headaches are hard to explain to someone who has never experienced one. The pain is like a railroad spike driven deep into your temple while someone blares an air horn somewhere nearby and noxious odors fill the room which seems to spin crazily as the lights flash off and on in random strobing patterns that stab into the back of your eyeballs...

As an adult, I tried lots of different things to try and manage the headaches. I never did tolerate the various prescription medications that came along over the years. Almost all of them caused me to vomit violently. So I turned to biofeedback and massage therapy and color visualization and accupressure and Ann Lander's imfamous banana peel cure and anything else that I could find that might offer some relief. I watched my diet and my sleep patterns and I avoided all the myriad environmental triggers that I knew about. It got so that I lived my life around my headaches. Even so, eventually I was having 12 to 15 debilitating headaches a month -- headaches that literally sent me to bed moaning and crying from the pain and nausea that they caused. And then, in the summer of 2003, T heard about a new medication, called topamax, that was beginning to be prescribed for migraines.

Topamax was originally prescribed for certain types of epileptic seizures. During the clinical trials, researchers discovered that about 85% of those who were prescribed the medication for their epilepsy (if they also suffered from migraine headaches) became headache free. The improvement was so significant that topamax was soon being released, on a limited basis for migraine sufferers as well -- a medication that could be taken, on a prophylactic basis to actually prevent the occurence of the headaches rather than treat them AFTER they start. T thought I should ask my doctor about it, and so did Master. I made an appointment.

My very careful doctor insisted that I see a neurologist for the prescribing of this stuff and so I had a very thorough workup (including an MRI), but in September of 2003, I began taking topamax for the prevention of migraine headaches.

Now that's a lot of background, but there's a reason for all of that. Taking topamax is not an easy undertaking. It is a powerful drug. I had to titrate the dosages up 25 milligrams at a time, week-by-week, until I reached a therapeutic dosage (for me) of 100 milligrams. The stuff made me absolutely stupid. I got lost on the way to work. I couldn't think of more than one thing at a time which made the simplest operations awfully challenging. My feet and hands tingled. Things tasted strange and I was often mildly nauseated (a sort of on-going morning sickness style icky feeling), and there was an interesting sort of emotional volatility that tended to run toward violence. Almost all of the side-effects eventually worked themselves out, but many of them took about 8 months to completely subside, and everytime I would increase the dosage, the level of the intensity of the side-effects would ratchet up again. It was a rocky time.

Well, that was almost a year and a half ago and I've been almost migraine free for all that time. There has been an occasional break-through headache, but they are very rare. I hardly think about them anymore. Until the last couple of weeks that is...

In the last two weeks, I've had 3 headaches and one of them was severe... Just awful. I suspect it has to do with hormonal shifts related to peri-menopause, but whatever the cause, I've been pretty miserable. So, we talked and without really thinking about it too much, we decided that maybe I could just up my topamax dose by 25 mg/day. It seemed reasonable. So Friday night I took an extra pill and again on Saturday night.

By Sunday morning, I could hardly think my way through the process of making the pancakes for breakfast. I stood in my kitchen with an egg in my hand trying to remember how to separate an egg, and I began to be really scared. Then there was the business of clearing the table... A dirty plate in one hand and a used paper napkin in the other, and I didn't know what to do with either of them -- had myself in a human "do loop." T saw me, and said, Sue, can I help. That snapped me out of it, but I was starting to get really nerved out. Later in the afternoon, I was beginning to see pink clouds floating near the ceiling. Definitely time for a nap. Master decided we were going to back that dosage thing back down immediately at that point. Oh brother!!! I'd really forgotten how wicked this stuff can be.

This morning was better I guess. But there was the little matter of our "session." Topamax causes emotional volatility. I was mad. The whole idea of getting spanked this morning made me furious. I didn't want to do it. It simply seemed unfair and unreasonable, and I knew that I would do it anyway, that I had no good reason to say "no." And that made me mad too. I tried to talk to myself, in my head and reason myself through the fury. I knew it was the drug. But the rage was red hot. Finally, I told Him I needed the restraints. I told Him I was just angry and too mad to be sure I could control it myself. Both of us remember an incident from the first go round with topamax. I don't ever want to go there again. He strapped me up and I raged and roared as He paddled me soundly and well, then held me while I sobbed my fury into His arms.

The tides are calming tonight I think. But it has been a wild weekend.

swan

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