What This is All About

Hi! I’m Emily. I’m a twenty year old college student who is a frequent migrainuer, with daily headaches and chronic pain. I have been diagnosed with tension-type headaches, migraines with and without aura. This is my blog chronicling headaches…

Wait.

Let me start over.

I’m a college student, a secondary education/English major. What does that have to do with headaches? Well, it means I had to take two composition classes. In those classes, I was asked to write about something I care about, something personal to me. The assignment was a research paper on any topic I wanted, the only stipulations were I had to care about it and I had to write for the conference held on campus. My original idea was to write about feminism, I don’t remember the full details of the topic I tried to swing but I didn’t end up writing about feminism. I sat down, tried to research, and I had a headache. My professor told us to write about something personal. The advice he gave us, “write what you know”. Begrudgingly, I gave in and decided to write about headaches.  Fourteen pages later, I had created a series of vignettes exploring impact headaches have had on me in my two short years of college. When I finished the paper, I realized I still had so much to say, that I merely scratched the surface. I barely looked at the stigma of headaches and the impacts of my social, academic, and romantic life. I did not talk about pain itself, I explored living with headaches everyday without talking about the pain.

I find this disconnect with people who do not experience chronic pain. We all experience pain, some of us experience headaches. I am always at a lost to explain what I’m going through on a daily basis, my life with pain, beyond pain. I wrote the paper, a series of vignettes – little snapshots of my life, and gave it to a friend to proofread. After reading it, my life was put in a whole new perspective for her. I want to put things into perspective. I am always finding this disconnect with people when it comes to explaining my headaches.  I hope this blog closes the gap between that disconnect and understanding.

The early posts of this blog are the vignettes I wrote for the paper. The posts to follow will be in the same style and explore what I did not get to talk about in my paper and other examples of what I explored in my paper.

I welcome comments and any discussion around my posts. This is all about understanding. Let’s talk about it.

(Edit 5/24) I’ve seen a couple searches related to my blog in relation to the spinal tap procedure I had done. This is not a medical blog by any means, yes I’m talking about medical procedures but do not take my experiences as fact. What didn’t work for me, might work for you. I’m not you and you are not me. It’s best that you talk with your doctor about what’s best for you. I can only share my own personal experiences which may or may not be like yours. I’m not a medical professional by any means, merely another sufferer like you. We can connect on that level if you like and again, I welcome that communication.

(Edit 6/14) I can be contacted privately by email via themorethanaheadacheblog@gmail.com