Turning 40 at 60. Raimon Samsó

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      50 Years Of Migraine

      Let me tell you a secret that I have never mentioned in my previous books: between the age of seven and eight, something unexplainable occurred in my state of health. Suddenly a "monster" came and sat next to me and stayed with me for fifty years.

      It was the "migraine monster."

      At that age, I started having episodes of severe migraines without apparent cause, which is known as migraine headaches (intense and lasting headache accompanied by other symptoms). The headache suddenly appeared in my life and without a known cause.

      At that time I could not, nor my parents, imagine that began a via crucis of pain that would last fifty years in search of a solution to that problem. It has been fifty years of suffering one of the most disabling ailments. Without having more response than ineffective analgesics that surely only worsened the problem (rebound headaches and other side effects).

      That was going to mark the rest of my life.

      My headaches were intense and completely incapacitated me, usually appeared after noon, gaining in intensity unstoppably and sending me to bed in the middle of the afternoon. Until the next day, they were almost always accompanied by vomiting, sensitivity to light and noise. For a child: the end of the world.

      Aspirin and other pain killers soon stopped working, each time I needed higher, more frequent doses, and their side effects took their toll. Gastritis, dizziness, eczema, vomiting, my body complained about these aggressions, now I know that I was attacking it chemically and that was not the way.

      Well-being is not achieved by declaring chemical warfare on your body. The only thing that ended with those migrainous episodes was a restful night (that when I was a child, after I was older, it was no longer the solution). Years later, not even rest one night would do me any good. Yes, as an adult, I went to bed with a headache and woke up with a headache after a bad night.

      Back then, after a night of rest, I remember that I woke up as new, euphoric, and grateful for living the end of the nightmare. The storm in a cup had stopped. The question was: how long?

      And as a person he was resurrected until the next episode, in which he succumbed again to pain. It went from bad to worse. And that was only going to get worse.

      I do not have to say that all the medicines to alleviate the symptoms did not help. I even took antidepressants (I was only a child!), Prescribed by one of my doctors, from the dozens of doctors I visited. And none could help me. When I travel through Barcelona today, I still remember, as I passed by, the portals of the buildings where I once visited a doctor with my mother.

      I was the youngest of three brothers, also the least physically strong. I guess when it was my turn, my mother did not have many resources or strength left. I was always the thinnest, the most vulnerable and the most sensitive to any influence of the environment. My parents had a hard time getting ahead.

      In fact, in my childhood, three times I was about to die for causes that do not come to mind. I suppose heaven wanted me to remain on earth. Since I was little I have always had the feeling of living on loan. That is why I am very grateful, everything that has come after has been a gift.

      My frequent headaches, one or more a week, led me to a pilgrimage through countless consultations of doctors of different specialties: general, neurologist, sight, psychologist, ear ... But none found the origin of my headaches.

      I remember that my after-school activity was going to the doctor, for me it was normal. After school my mother took me from one doctor to another. My doctors (in the plural) tried different medications with me: from the conventional to the more specific, but the migraines kept coming one after the other.

      Perhaps the most traumatic test I suffered was to rule out a brain tumor. When I was ten years old, I ended up at the operating room table to analyze my spinal cord and rule out a tumor. To verify, I was admitted to a hospital and under general anesthesia they extracted a sample from the spinal cord, a very delicate test. I remember that the headache I went through when I woke up from anesthesia was one of the hardest in my life. To recover from that test I spent a week lying in bed because only by getting up I lost my balance.

      Today would be different, but in the sixties in Spain there was not much technology or sophistication. The result of the test: negative, they found nothing. But my head hurt.

      Another useless test was to check my vision. I did not need glasses but it would have to be evaluated, one of the doctors said. This time the test, or torture, was to put a few drops in the eyes that would dilate my pupils. That was in the morning, and in the afternoon the doctor would examine me with an optical device for that purpose. After putting on the drops, the view became so blurred and out of focus that I needed help walking.

      Even if you do not believe it, that day they took me to school and then to the doctor; but it turned out that on that day, bad luck, the optician's apparatus had broken down to examine me. I spent a total of about 12 hours almost blindly, not at all. I remember that my mother, disconsolate, gave me a toy as a prize, with which I could not play because I simply could not see it clearly.

      More pain, more frustration, more loss of time and hope ... I can tell stories like this until I get bored. I know firsthand what it is like to feel a defective, limited, tare child.

      The good thing about the bad that I can recognize now is that the weakness made me very humble. He knew that he was coming from misfortune and that at any moment he could return to the most absolute misery. He knew where he came from and that he could go back there again. Within minutes I could declare a crisis that would knock me out for a whole day or more. That horizon does not allow you to make many plans and leads you to live in the here and now, and tomorrow you will see. That is why, when my crises were resolved, I was moved and cried with gratitude.

      I know, from a very young age, what it is to suffer an unbearable pain that pierces your head and lasts for hours and hours; and what is worse: for which he had no effective remedy. I was frustrated because I did not have a remedy. And if I felt bad, I can now imagine how my parents felt Impotence and despair. See how his little boy was consumed with pain in the bed without much to do except comfort him.

      I grew up with the "migraine monster" by my side. Knowing that at anytime my life as a child, as a young person, as a student and in my leisure activities ... I could enter a sudden standby, full of pain, with life postponed. Of greater would be equal always apologizing to others, always giving explanations that sometimes did not understand. And they interpreted as excuses. I do not blame them, when you have not gone through something similar it is impossible to get an idea of ​​what it means.

      It should be noted that headache is the third cause of school absenteeism, but some still believe that it is an excuse, unless it is migrainous. I guess whoever reads this, and something similar has