Finally Migraine Relief! (It's not all in my head, literally)

I received an accupressure chair massage last week for 15 minutes (my VP brought in a guy as a gift for the team). I had a migraine going in and almost didn't take my session. It was edging a thundercap cluster type headache which I've been getting alot lately too - it's in the same family as migraines and uses the trigeminal nerve to affect the face too.  I couldn't take the reactive medicine and drive home, so I was toughing out the day.  My mom calls it "soldiering on" so now I soldier alot.

I am SO GLAD that I went on - I figured that since I signed up for a slot, I should take it and not let Max stop me. (I named my migraine problem - he's around so much that we needed to be on first name basis. ::grin::) The massage guy did accupressure on my right cheek and temple and found a really sore spot on my right upper shoulder blade, where you would never be able to reach on your own, so would never know that pressure there would hurt like that! Amazing. It hurt while he was doing it like crazy, but seconds after he stopped, I realized that my head felt better, released somehow from the pain. Wow. I haven't had a migraine since then - ok it's only been a week but that's a long time for me as a migraineur. (I love that phrase - makes it sound exotic and French - like it's a privilege and not pain.)

I looked up to see where the trigeminal nerve runs through - migraines use the trigeminal nerve to send pain, as I said earlier. (Which scares me silly, as my mom has trigeminal neuralgia and she was a physical wreck, talking about dying so she could just escape the screaming pain,  before she finally had cyberknife surgery 3 years ago - whole 'nother story...) Anyway!...

I knew about the trigeminal nerve and where it travels in the head but I didn't know more than that. I learned that the trigeminal nerve uses something called the spinal trigeminal nucleus to send nerve responses like pain to the face. Wow.  If I hadn't had the 15 minute accupressure, I wouldn't have made this connection. 

Check out this link to http://www.helpforheadaches.com/lyfiles/illus-pathways.hym  - cool graphic that shows the migraine progression in the head.   This link is interesting too for migraineuin rs - http://headacheandmigrainenews.com/what-is-migraine-the-scientific-story.  It puts into plain English what happens with a migraine (and I guess the cluster headaches are similar). I work with alot of tech-y public health training and things that I never thought would cross my instructional design path (very Oak Ridge-y training development, if you have to ask, you don't live here), so this type of reading is getting very familiar to me. It's a bit funny when I realize how much that I hated Chemistry in high school!!! I swear it was my teacher and not me. (Would anyone from USCC think that I would be developing this type of training?? I love it and I've discovered that if you really like it, you're good at it! It's actually even fun. Maybe it's not the content of the training but the awesome workplace and support - plus the challenge of learning new things and getting respect for your work and your skill. The good leadership and the friendly rapport that is common to ORISE makes a world of difference. I haven't really had that since Jill stopped being my leader at USCC. Shutting up now.)

Anyway, there's the story - you can't imagine how this helps me. I like to know how things work. When I found out I had MS, it was scary until I did research and found a neurologist who was human (Dr. Wray) and didn't talk down to me (ok sometimes but not all the time). She explained it all and then once I understood what was happening in my brain, it was very freeing to me. Now I know this too, and I have a trick in my bag for migraines - let's hope I'm right and it works like that again when I need it to.