It’s been four years since my last post. In that time, nothing has helped my chronic daily migraines. They’ve even worsened a bit in severity, and I’m so sensitive to light, sound, smell and touch that nearly everything triggers the migraines or increases their severity. I rarely can go outdoors, even at night, because any bright light, loud noise, or motion of the car can set it off. Even worse, I can barely concentrate on any tasks, and even programming books are difficult to read now.
I’ve recently been (unpleasantly) surprised by a disturbing new symptom. It feels as if the skin on my feet and legs has been splashed with acid — an extremely painful burning sensation. It seems to be similar to diabetic neuropathy, but I’m not diabetic. This will require a thorough neurological workup and blood tests to rule out temporary causes and find out if there is nerve damage of some sort.
By the way, for all of you who think that migraines are “just a headache”, here’s a list of some of my symptoms. Most of these occur every day, with the exception of the speech and skin pain problems, which are less frequent.
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- Head pain on one side (that’s the headache part)
- Eye pain — as if an icepick were being jabbed through my eyeball
- Extreme sensitivity to light, sound, touch, odors, temperature changes
- Stomach pain
- Back and chest pain — spasms in muscles
- Dizziness, vertigo — with a few falls
- Nausea
- Inability to eat, sometimes for days on end. Sometimes nauseated by the smell of foods that I normally like.
- Inability to concentrate, with the effort to concentrate worsening the pain
- Mental confusion
- Inability to focus my eyes due to unequal focusing in the two eyes (one eye focused at one distance, the other continuously varying its focal distance over a range of a few diopters)
- Inability to speak
- Insomnia
- Loss of fine motor coordination
- Burning sensation on skin
At least I have a little hope that the new CGRP antagonists, while extremely expensive, might give me some degree of relief. I’ll be getting my first dose in about a month, so we’ll see what happens.