Mind, migraines, memory and me

I'm telling some stories about my life today, some things that are painful and mysterious in more ways than one. Mostly because I'm on a journey of discovery amidst it all and am interested in keeping track of the answers I come by and the experiences that shape that future. Be warned, it's a long one....

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Story No 1

One of the biggest challenges I've had as an individual and as an employee is problems with memory and concentration. Before I was asked to leave my first office job the boss called me into his office to ask if I'd been sexually abused. An interesting conclusion, but he couldn't think of any other reason why someone who scored so high in the company intelligence test, desgined to weed out the dingbats at interview, could be so dumb and prone to so many weird little errors in simple everyday tasks.

By the time I'd worked my way through another few office jobs I realised something needed to be done so I got on the phone for a few hours and found a psychologist who seemed to know what she was talking about. After nearly 4 hours of intelliegence testing she confirmed that no, I didn't lack intelligence but infact, was in the 96 - 98 percentile for logic, problem solving and spacial intelligence. The trouble was my memory, which sat around the 40 percentile. She noticed that I have unusual ways of problem solving, which probably doesn't help with encoding.

At the time I was only interested in what I could possibly do for a living. So, on her recommendation I went to uni and picked something that wouldn't rely specifically on memory. After a Psychology degree I finished up in education. Getting the highest GPA in my course was a real boost, but even then I knew it wouldn't go anywhere near compensating for my deficits. I can't say teaching is ideal for someone in my position but I'm still doing it and giving it my best.

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Story No 2

I've had migraines since I started high school. They were always the same till I started taking regular medication. I'd get an aura that started in the middle of both eyes and worked its way out to the edges of my eye sight over a half hour period. Then I'd start to feel the headache coming on, and 45 minutes or so after that I'd fell nauseus and start vomiting, grateful every time for the few minutes of relief it brought from the pain.

Fortunately, after a few hours of bouncing around in the dark between my pillow and my bucket I'd sleep the rest off and wake-up later feeling floaty and free.

In my late 20's I had a particularly bad patch of migraines. A crazy Persian doctor friend of mine was called over at all hours of the day and night to inject me with pain relief and I began to wonder what kind of future I had bailed up in my bed. Another migraine sufferer told me about a new drug she was trying, so I started on Propranolol, a drug used to control high blood pressure. Apparently it dilates the blood vessles in the brain, preventing the contriction thought to bring on migraines. I can't imagine what the last ten years would have been like without it, but I'm srarting to wonder if all the niggly headaches and eye disturbances that never end up in a full blown migraine are still dripping away at the corners of my mind, erroding the everyday skills that we take for granted

Tonight I actually decided to move away from the possibilities I've been throwing around in my head for the past few years and have a look at what medical research is saying about the impact of migraines on the brain.

And here's what I've found....



The structure of the brain changes in those who have migraines. They also have a thicker cortex than those who don't. With visual and sensory symptoms comes a greater risk of stoke as some medical people are saying migraines themselves are a transient or mini stroke.

On top of this good news female migrain sufferers are two times more likely to devlop deep white matter lesions than the 'normal' population.

15% of people who get migraines know they're coming because of the aura, visual symptoms like that which I mentioned earlier in my story. This may be a "Cortical Spreading Depression" which passes through the brain like a wave, in effect putting its lights out and preventing neurons (brain cells) from firing. It's may not only be causing the aura and the pain but swelling in the brain which then in turn starve brain cell of oxygen leaving them damaged and less able to communicate with eachother to pass messages around the brain.

So, it's no suprise to me that many researchers believe that... migraines may cause brain damage .There seem to be quite a few studies that indicate migraineurs have deficiencies with tasks involving attention, verbal ability and memory.

I guess as with most research there's always exceptions, I found those too. According to this researcher, I might be one of the lucky ones and be protected against memory loss after 50 because I've had migraines most of my life.

I'd love to find the answer to all this, but in some ways I can see that even if I did, there wouldn't be much I could do about it anyway. I'd still have to manage migraines, deal with the implications of not remembering students names and forgetting exam supervision twice in in two days.

In the end you just have to marvel at the mystery that is this body God made us and get mad about the sin in this world that sends this finely tuned instrument into disharmony in so many different ways. There's no doubt I'd like answers and cures. I hope science works something out what's going on. But I do know that one day it will all be made right. It will be a great day when I'm free of that sinking feeling in my stomach that I can't remember the next word I'm trying to get out of my mouth.