My first migraine
When you are a migraine sufferer, you don't ask yourself where it comes from, why it hits you, what you did to deserve such pain. When we have clearer ideas, we learn to know ourselves better, to apprehend our body and to find solutions. But when you don't know about this terrible evil, you can't even really imagine it. We make assumptions and compare with what we know ourselves (and in particular the banal headache). Here are some testimonials to help you become aware of what a migraine is, what it produces, what it induces... To collect these testimonies, a survey was carried out on the internet. A big thank you to those who shared their migraine experiences through this questionnaire. This text is designed to help those who want to understand, and perhaps to accompany a member of their family in their daily life.
A first migraine, a first blow to the head
The experience and the experience are different, but the feeling is the same: searing pain and an inability to do anything else, with the added bonus of an irrepressible desire to sleep. The first time is scary. On the one hand, we don't understand what we are going through and on the other hand, we are afraid. Fear is the dominant feeling felt by people who have experienced their first migraine, often young. Pain, fear, vomiting, sleepiness, blindness, panic are the feelings and symptoms of the first migraine in many people. The word migraine is not yet on the agenda because, for most people, they do not understand. We are at school, at the leisure centre, with the family for dinner, sometimes at work, with friends, or even alone, at home... and it is time to dive into a suffering brain. Sandrine de Nancy tells us: “I don't know if it's the first, but it's the one that stuck in my memory. A normal school day over 45 years ago (I must have been 8 or 10), I can't remember if there was a trigger. On my way out I started having a headache and the headache intensified on my way home a few minutes from school. I told my mother that I had a headache and at the same time I ran to throw up. My eyes closed on their own, I vomited again before going to bed until the next morning. When I woke up, I was fresh as a roach. »
Migraine, a family legacy?
The other point is revealed in this questionnaire is a concordance on the fact that the people today migraineurs learned that another person of their family was struck by the same disease. Whether it is the grandmother, the mother or the father, then brothers, sisters or cousins / cousins, migraine appears as a real family story . Many testimonies tell us that during the first crisis, speech is freed and we learn that this evil is not new. How did you find out you had migraines? Nelly (France): “A migraine dad, suddenly, I knew. “A person from Lille:” I knew for having seen my father suffer from it since my early childhood. Myriam (Landes): “My mother had this kind of crisis (headaches and vomiting). At the time, we were talking about “liver attack”” Sandrine (Albertville): “My mother was also a migraine sufferer when I had my first migraines, we immediately knew what it was. Vanesse (Le Havre): “My grandmother and my paternal uncle suffered from migraines. So my dad took me to the neurologist. The family testimonies are much more numerous, but tell that a family ground exists. This should, however, lead to a greater tolerance towards the disease, but unfortunately, this is not yet the case, especially if we listen to the various life testimonies of the entourage in the face of migraine.
The pain of words
Migraine pain is already intense enough not to add to it. However, people in misunderstanding or ignorance fuel, often unwittingly, pain. That of words; those we often hear: Céline from Toulouse: “It will pass. Courage. Expect menopause! Élodie de Paris: "Have you tried...?" » Or « take a doliprane, it will pass » or even « ha, the good excuse, as if by chance, today is when you have a migraine...! A person from Narbonne: “Stop stressing out” Constance from Lille: “But miss, you just have to relax. I prescribe you ibuprofen for the attacks (migraine sufferer for 15 years, I have obviously tested ibuprofen and relaxation a billion times...)” Fortunately, many people around migraine sufferers and migraine sufferers are caring, attentive and understanding.
