Emotional Support Sisters

It’s story time! Before I start my story though, I must let everyone know that I can see God’s hand through this journey. There have been many tiny miracles along the way. He has sustained me through the hard times and led me to the information I needed when I needed it.

The story starts when I was 20. I was getting a moving dolly out of the back of the truck, and instead of pulling the tailgate down I stood on the bumper. As I was stepping back my pant leg caught on the trailer hitch and I fell straight back, catching my fall with my head. My family says they are still haunted by the scream that brought them running to my aid. I did not lose consciousness, but I saw only black for a several moments. The next day I got a CT scan. The Dr told me there was a small bruise at the top of my brain stem, but nothing to worry about.  He gave me muscle relaxants because my neck was so tight I couldn’t move it and sent me on my way with the instructions to let me body be my guide concerning activity levels while I recovered.

As the years passed I started to pick up random unrelated diagnosis- IBS, chronic fatigue, anxiety, ADHD, PMDD, and vertigo just to name a few.

The vertigo was the lynchpin that helped solve the mystery. I went to an ENT thinking the extreme vertigo (I’ve had minor random vertigo spells for a while, but this was way different) was from a sinus infection. It wasn’t. He sent me to an audiologist. The audiologist said my ears were perfect and I was having vestibular migraines. He prescribed me some medicine that helped confirm the diagnosis to me, but the side effects eventually became worse than the disease.

This led me to late nights looking for someone that treats migraines instead of symptoms. I found a migraine clinic about 30 minutes from my house that intrigued me. I was a little nervous because they didn’t accept insurance, but decided to give it a try. 

My first appointment lasted almost 2 hours. The doctor listened to my story. He believed me. I went into his office feeling hopeless and like my life was never going to be my life, but my disease’s life, and came out of his office feeling hope. Just knowing that I wouldn’t have to live in a foggy existence for the rest of my life reenergized me.

I’ll go through the diagnosing process and treatment plan in another post, but explain the diagnosis now. The migraines and other weird symptoms I’ve been experiencing stem from 3 issues. The first being post concussive syndrome. The second, also stemming from the injury, is an impinged nerve due to a tilted vertebrae being held in place by scar tissue. The third being extreme reactive hypoglycemia.