By the time I was in high school, the other kids were old enough that not all of them were so insensitive to someone who was ill. I was able to make more friends. Since my Migraines weren’t very frequent, I was actually able to have some social life. My parents had also gotten to the point of letting me stay home from school, without questions, when I didn’t feel well.
College in the early 70’s was a different situation entirely. Some doctors still thought Migraines were psychological or a “woman’s thing” and were very patronizing. Triptans were still years in the future, so doctors either told me to take aspirin or, if I were lucky, wrote me a prescription for pain medication. I spent my first semester of college at a large university, and the professors (for the most part) didn’t consider a “headache” reason enough to miss a class session, let alone an exam. More than once, I was accused of having partied too much the night before or of using drugs. At the end of that semester, I transferred to a smaller branch of the university, where I found the professors to be far more understanding and accommodating. It helped that the campus nurse was also a Migraineur. I could go to the infirmary when I needed to, and she’d help me. She not only took care of me, she’d send an assistant to take notes to the professors of any classes I was missing, telling them where I was. One professor, who didn’t allow exams to be made up, actually sent his graduate assistant to the infirmary with the exam I was missing to allow me to do the exam orally since I couldn’t read it with my Migraine. Such were the advantages of a smaller college and, I’m told, of having a high grade point average.
When I was in my early 20’s, my Migraines gradually became more frequent and more severe. My family doctor sent me to an ENT (Ears, Nose, and throat specialist). That brilliant man (yeah, right) examined me, then said, “Congratulations. You’re an intellectual. You have Migraines.” I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the beginning of 20 years of going from doctor to doctor seeking help. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was his tone of voice, but I knew this doctor was not going to be any help to me. My family doctor, when he got the report from the ENT, wasn’t any help either. He just told me that “lots of women have Migraines. All you can do is take your pain pills and live with them.” So, that’s what I did, for then.
