Ever have an awful headache – maybe from all of that late-night drinking that seemed like an awesome idea at the time or from all of the stress involved in school? The throbbing pain near the temples of your head, the inability of your eyes to focus on any object whether it be near or far, the feeling that every word uttered by someone or any noise heard sounds as though it were amplified using a megaphone…sound familiar? Well, multiply this headache by one hundred or so and then you have a migraine.

                My migraines began at the end of my freshman year of college. Up until the fall term of my sophomore year, I had only had a few full-fledged migraines intermittently; however, with the start of my sophomore year, the migraines only became increasingly more frequent and thus, more predictable. My migraines, like most individuals’, are long-lasting, to the point that a single migraine can last up to four to five days with no relief. I can usually feel one coming on – my vision begins to blur and I suddenly become photophobic. About an hour or so later, the actual headache component of the migraine arrives both announced and expected. My migraines are usually positional in the sense that I should I foolishly choose to either sit or stand up, then the migraine will begin to pound and pulsate approximately to the cadence of my heart. Therefore, as soon as I begin to experience blurring vision and then photophobia, I immediately retreat to my room, or my bat cave as I now refer to it, and lie down so that my head will not throb as much.

                 I say this because this past weekend was my migraine weekend – I was on the train Friday evening when my vision began to blur and I panicked immediately because I’d never had a ‘public’ migraine onset before. Luckily, however, I was almost near my stop and I figured that I had at least an hour or so before the headache arrived. Fortunately, I reached home just in time for the commencement of my migraine and therefore, spent the rest of the weekend (until about 9pm Sunday) in my bat cave staring into the dark and falling asleep to the sound of my own heartbeat.