My Life With Chronic Migraines

Christine Junge, 32, works as the associate managing editor at Harvard Health Publications. For about a year, she has had chronic daily headache. Here she describes what it's like to live with this severely debilitating condition.

Every day, I wake up with a headache and go to sleep with a headache. Sometimes, the pain is just a mild throbbing sensation. Other times, it feels like someone is tightening screws into the sides of my head or pounding a hammer above my left eye. And other times, there's just a general sense of an ever-tightening pressure. But the pain never goes away, unless I'm asleep.

I always got more headaches than the average person — maybe three a week. Initially, they were mild and usually went away if I took an over-the-counter pain medication. But following a bad viral infection that left me sneezing and feeling run down for 12 weeks, I started to get a headache every day. At first, they started around 1 p.m. and persisted until I went to sleep. A few months later, I developed occipital neuralgia, a distinct type of headache that causes electric-shock-like chronic pain in the upper neck and behind the ears. Eventually, I also became extremely sensitive to light, at which point my doctor suspected that my condition had transformed into a chronic migraine.

Just as the pain varies, so do my moods and reactions to it. When the pain was at its worst, I felt like I was going to go crazy if I had to deal with it for one more minute. For about a month, I spent most of my days in bed crying. I worried that I would never get better. I couldn't even think straight, let alone do any of the things I loved, like gardening or hiking with my husband and our dog. I also cut my hours at work. As a result of all these changes, I completely lost my sense of self.

I'm finally starting to experience some relief, with help from a physiatrist (a physician who specializes in diagnosing and treating pain) and a neurologist. I'm on a medley of medications — gabapentin, topiramate, amitriptyline, and tizanidine (see "Preventing chronic daily headache"). All of them caused drowsiness — when I first started on them, I would sleep up to 16 hours a day. Luckily, the drowsiness subsided with time. I also got a steroid injection for the occipital neuralgia, and most recently, Botox injections (see "Botox for chronic migraine").

I'm also doing everything I can to stay physically and mentally healthy. I eat a very healthy diet and sleep at least eight hours a night. I try to do 30 minutes of aerobic activity every day, in addition to the stretching exercises recommended by my physical therapist, which mostly target my neck and shoulders.

I can also recommend a few things that really helped me cope with my situation:

• Find the right doctor for you, even if it takes a few tries. When I finally found a neurologist I liked and trusted (and who returned my calls), my headaches really started to get better.

• Seek out someone to talk to who has been through something similar. My husband suffered from bad back pain a few years ago, so he understands much of my fear and frustration. If no one close to you has been in a similar situation, seek a support group, either in person or online.

• Figure out ways to simplify your life until you get better. Ask if you can reduce your hours or responsibilities at work for a period of time. Hire a cleaning service or have groceries delivered.

• Find something to keep you occupied on bad days. I turned to podcasts and books on tape I could listen to while I lay in bed. I also got a tai chi DVD, so that I could move around a little when I got sick of lying down.

• Let your emotions out once in a while. Punch a pillow or scream at the top of your lungs.

I'm still experiencing a tension-type headache almost 24 hours a day. Although unpleasant, my current situation is far more manageable than in the past. Also, now that I feel that the treatment is working — and that my doctor isn't going to give up on me — I'm able to sustain hope that someday soon, my daily headaches will be a thing of the past.