Migraine Headaches, Abdominal Migraines, and Hope for Healing

For this post Chronically Beautiful teamed up with the Diamond Headache Clinic in Chicago Illinois to bring you information on chronic forms of headaches, migraines, and abdominal migraines.  We also hope to give you information on diagnosis and treatment of these conditions.  The following story is my personal experience with migraines, and abdominal migraines, and I have high hopes that we can openly spread some light on the subject and spread the message of hope for healing!  

I was born with Chronic Lyme disease, but I didn't know until I was about eighteen years old.  The Lyme spirochetes settled in my stomach, to begin with, and I suffered from what I believe to be abdominal migraines for about three years of my childhood.  I recall many days of school missed, lots of doctor and hospital visits, and an entire summer where all I could manage to do was stay on a couch watching TV, playing video games, or reading a book.  Those years of my childhood were my first taste of what Lyme disease had to offer me.  Little did I know the long battle that I had ahead of me.  I personally believe that abdominal migraines can be a symptom of Lyme disease, therefore making the root cause of my pain the bacteria slowly eating away at my digestive system.  After some dietary changes and a lot of suffering later, I believed for a while that I had simply "grown out" of my severe and consistent stomach pain and I was ready, as a pre-teen, to face the world head-on.  Unfortunately, you never really grow out of Lyme disease.  You simply build your immune system enough so your body can handle the high amount of toxins in your system.  I guess for awhile, my immune system kicked into full gear, and I was okay.

As a young teenager, I recall many moments when I would be sitting in a church meeting, and all of sudden the speaker standing at the podium in front of me would appear to be fuzzy and blurry.  I recall large black dots forming on their face, on the walls, and everywhere around me.  I recall going home with the feeling of knives shooting through my brain.  I'd come home to puke, and then sleep until the pain eased up.  I did this a lot as a young teenager.  Unfortunately for me at the time, there wasn't a doctor that I went to that had an answer to my mysterious and seemingly random health problems. I simply had to endure the pain.  And when the medication didn't work or made me worse, there didn't seem to be relief.  There didn't seem to be an answer.  My first tastes of Lyme disease were very bitter.  And at the time I had no idea what I was actually tasting. 

The good news is that I've discovered now that there are things we can do to help symptoms and illnesses such as migraines and chronic headaches.  Suffering from any form of a chronic migraine I know from experience is very real and very painful.  Today we have alternative forms of help and lifestyle change that can improve our quality of life through chronic conditions like this.  For more information on migraines and headaches, please view the following presentation provided for us by the Diamond Headache Clinic.  We appreciate their help and commend them for striving to help people who suffer from painful conditions such as abdominal migraines and chronic headaches.  May we ever keep trying to find hope for healing and healing methods that help to heal the mind, heart, and body as a whole.

Courtesy of Diamond Headache Clinic