An Unwanted Inheritance
My typically rambunctious six-year-old son sits at the kitchen table, unusually quiet. He cradles his forehead in his left hand, as his right limply lifts small bites of food to his mouth. After a moment, he turns to me and says, “Mama, my head hurts real bad. Can I go to bed?”
With those words, a wave of dread washes over me. Although this might be just a run-of-the-mill headache, I’ve learned from experience not to shrug off neurological maladies. I was just about my son’s age, maybe younger (the specifics are hazy), when I received an inheritance I never wanted: Migraine. Passed down from one generation to the next like some haunted family heirloom no one can dispose of, I acquired its bounty from my mother, who obtained it from my grandmother.
And now, I’m terrified I’ve passed it along to my child.
I think back to when I was his age and do a compare and contrast, trying to diagnose his ailment. He’s not vomiting, the way I did with every migraine. He’s not crying, which means he’s not overcome with pain. Good signs all around. But he is pale, and his typically robust appetite has diminished. And in recent months he’s exhibited symptoms of abdominal migraine, defined by the American Migraine Foundation as “a sub-type of migraine seen mainly in children [that] consists of episodes of abdominal pain with nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite or pallor.”
A dark cloud of concern hovers over me as I walk him upstairs, give him children’s acetaminophen, and tuck him into bed with a cold cloth over his forehead. He falls into a deep sleep and is pain-free by morning. For him, the prior evening’s malady is a distant memory, but I hold on to it. Each complaint of headache or nausea takes me back in time and I’m faced with the commencement of my own relationship with migraine — and the years of adolescent suffering, desolation, and anxiety that came with it.
Ironically, the pain wasn’t the worst part of my experience. It was the loneliness. In all of my elementary schooling, from kindergarten through eighth grade, not once did I meet another child suffering from migraine headaches. Because of various family moves, I changed schools multiple times, and yet each new setting introduced the same cast of characters: Dismissive educators, confused classmates, and the occasional sympathetic school nurse. I became known as “the girl who is sick all the time,” as teachers would dispense chewable children’s aspirin I’d brought from home and principals would admonish me for not playing through the pain. On many occasions I had to listen politely to a frustrated adult lecture me on how to suck it up, while one half of my skull felt as though it was being carved open with an ice pick.
This lack of understanding is commonplace; the Migraine Research Foundation states, “Kids with migraine are often undiagnosed or under-treated, and there are very few headache specialists who will treat them.” The problem wasn’t that the adults in my educational life didn’t care, but that, as non-migraineurs, they just couldn’t grasp how a mere “headache” could cause so much distress. Every time I requested medication or pleaded to go home, they assumed I was being dramatic. It was a difficult position for me to be in; I never wanted to talk back but was aware that I knew so much more about my predicament than those in a position of power. It taught me an important lesson, which I hope I can pass on to my son as he ages: Be respectful but push back as needed, and never let anyone belittle your pain.
Thus far, he hasn’t been sent home from school because of headaches, so he’s already ahead of where I was at his age. I think this is due to my intense focus on his potential migraine triggers, something I was clueless about as a child. (I entered school in the 1980s, long before the advent of Google or WebMD. The only trigger I knew of back then was the one Erik Estrada used to shoot his gun on the TV show CHiPs.)
I often wonder how my childhood would have turned out had I been more self-aware. If someone had explained that dehydration, heat, physical exertion, foods, and stress can induce an hours-long, painful battle within my brain, perhaps I could have taken steps to reduce the frequency of the episodes.
Since I can’t change my past, I’m using what I’ve learned to ease my son’s pain and I structure his days around these lessons: Eat three meals a day. Healthy snacks between meals. Little sugar. Lots of water and milk — hydration is key. Regular sleep patterns, and at least 10 hours of slumber a night. I encourage him to have fun and be the boisterous little boy he’s meant to be, but to always take a break when he begins to feel his head ache. Don’t be like I was, I think. Rest when you need it. Don’t ignore the pressure building behind your eye until it’s so bad you’re sobbing and can’t see straight.
When it comes to managing my little boy’s health, my experience and knowledge is all I have to offer. I can’t erase illness from his life. I can’t predict how much migraine will affect his childhood; only time will tell if he’ll follow the path forged by his lineage. But I can use all I learned as a child migraineur to help mitigate his pain. And I will do everything in my power to ensure he doesn’t suffer as I did.
An earlier version of this piece was originally published in Folks.