by Brittany Shoot
When my alarm goes off at 7:32 a.m., I slap at it while trying to dodge a blinding ray of morning sunshine.
That should get me going. Instead, I groan and try to turn away.
The light sears my sensitive eyes, and the ache in the back of my neck doesn’t so much abate as twist when I rotate my head. The inside of my skull feels raw and fuzzy like an inverted tennis ball.
My husband hears my muffled moaning in the next room and comes in to check on me. “Is it your head?” he asks, already knowing the answer and leaning down in case I’d like his help sitting up.
I do. As I sit upright for the first time, I get that initial diagnostic blood rush that helps me gauge how soon I need coffee, or ibuprofen, or something stronger to make it through the morning.
Migraines can make even the healthiest body feel aged and weak.
This particular day, the pounding subsides after about two minutes. That means it’s a good day. At this rate, I’ll be at my desk working within 30 minutes.
With my right hand on my temple to ease the throbbing, I shuffle to the bathroom and shake two pain relievers into my mouth. The tap water seems extra cold this morning as I wash down the tablets, then splash my face. I wonder if other people — people without chronic migraines — feel the same intense relief of icy water on their skin, the way it feels like it penetrates the surface, tingling with healing powers.
I head into the kitchen and hit the button on the electric teakettle to get water boiling for coffee. From there, my hand goes automatically to the refrigerator. There’s a cooling eye gel roller in the door. I smear it around my eyes and on my temples, which probably makes me look even more manic than I feel.
But mostly, I don’t feel manic. I feel tired.
Migraines can make even the healthiest body feel aged and weak.
A National Epidemic, Especially Among Women
Describing a mostly undetectable illness can also wear a person out. According to the Migraine Research Foundation, more than 38 million Americans suffer from migraine headaches. Of those, a whopping 28 million are women. It’s a fairly common condition, but talking about pain, especially invisible pain, is intrinsically linked with gender norms, no matter how enlightened you think you are. For years, I apologized for inconveniencing my friends. Even now, I’m overly grateful that my kind husband is such a supportive caretaker, simply because I’m so used to explaining away my own suffering.
I’m not alone in battling the stigma, as migraines have unusual cultural baggage. Back in 2011, then-presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann was roundly dismissed as a strong contender due to the sexist assumption she wouldn’t be able to hold higher office while suffering from debilitating headaches. Say what you will about her political positions, but women migraine sufferers are often used to defending their pain in an uncomfortably similar manner.
Talking about pain, especially invisible pain, is intrinsically linked with gender norms…
This isn’t about gendered weakness; it’s scientifically proven that women experience more pain than men. Studies suggest that because men’s and women’s brains are different, women are more sensitive to pain, which certainly could explain why women are also the majority sufferers of conditions such as fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis, as well as migraine sufferers in far greater numbers. Women have also been shown to be more resilient when it comes to tolerating pain, though I have to wonder which came first: all this gendered pain or our ability as women to deal with it.
After nearly three decades of managing the symptoms, I can tell when a migraine is going to be easy to quash, and when I need to pop a triptan. Depending on the day and severity of my symptoms, some people might not even label my pain as a migraine; today, for example, it’s likely a run-of-the-mill headache.
But, given that I’ve had debilitating headaches since I was around 8 years old and been trying to explain them since, I don’t tend to parse the difference anymore. If I can get up and get to work, I’m grateful. That doesn’t mean I’m entirely well, or that my pain doesn’t deserve its severity label.
How Migraines Gave Me My Dream Job
For the past decade, I’ve been an independent journalist, which means I work for half a dozen publications at any given time, covering stories and topics across a range of issues. I relish the education and diversity of subject I get to cover… but I especially love that I get to set my own schedule.
That’s because, as a lifelong migraine sufferer, traditional 9-to-5 employment isn’t exactly designed for people like me, who can experience extreme torment at the drop of a hat. When I experience an attack, I have to quickly deal with any number of symptoms, ranging from projectile vomiting to extreme sensitivity to sound and light.
As a lifelong migraine sufferer, traditional 9-to-5 employment isn’t exactly designed for people like me…
Being a freelancer is a lot like being a perpetual student. There are constant deadlines and little resembling a traditional workday schedule. (Going out with fellow freelancers during the week is like the study group part of adulthood.) I love the unpredictability and often late hours, and I’m extremely fortunate to be so well suited to my profession. Some of the sting of freelancing is also taken out of my situation thanks to the fact that my partner’s job provides me with reliable health insurance.
I’ve always been entrepreneurial by nature. During graduate school, I had several jobs — in upscale restaurants and university offices — that helped cement my desire to figure out how to be as professionally self-sufficient as possible. In each of them, my migraines helped quickly drive me from the job.
In one administrative position, the office’s overhead fluorescent light panels often made me ill, or at least threatened to do me in. I’d be fine for weeks at a time, and then, due to some unknown trigger, the lights would do me in, and the migraine symptoms would suddenly show up. I’d have to ask to go home sick in the middle of the afternoon, helplessly trying to explain that, like Cinderella at 11:15pm, I was just 45 minutes away from a complete breakdown. “You see, I can already tell that if I don’t get to bed now, I’ll be blindly throwing up in the ladies room in less than an hour.” Talk about oversharing… but how can you discuss a sickness you can’t see if you don’t overshare?
But there are worse things than managers that don’t understand. After going home with a migraine at a high-end waitressing job, my paternalistic boss decided I didn’t need to come in the next morning.
How can you discuss a sickness you can’t see if you don’t overshare?
“You should rest,” he insisted, and took me off the schedule even though I was well enough to go in, and needed the money.
“I’ve had migraines. I know how they are,” he said as if I didn’t know the same.
It wasn’t long after that I swore I’d find ways to not be reliant on people like him, who both seemingly cared but ultimately robbed me of the one thing a job is supposed to be about: making a living.
But Self-Employment Shouldn’t Be The Only Solution
Illness and disease are often talked about in terms of cost, and I don’t just mean health insurance or prescription medication.
Recently, after spraining my foot while out reporting in the mountains, I began thinking about the personal and social costs one incurs from some sort of symptom set or constraint. I can still walk, but in a controlled ankle motion (CAM) boot, I’m forced to be steadier and slower. If I want to get around quicker, I could spend money on a taxi. Even I want to take public transit, a cheaper option, I’ll still likely force some small percentage of commuters to wait on me. My personal injury or illness may mean the bus doesn’t run on time for a large group of people.
When my migraines were more frequent and intense, it had measureable costs. There is immense privilege in being able to be self-employed, and to have access to the drugs I need. There were times when my preferred prescription, still under patent and unavailable as a generic, cost $45 a tablet without insurance. Weighing whether and when to treat symptoms is something far too many people consider every day. If my husband were ever without full-time work and health benefits, I’d have to reconsider the independent nature of my career.
As with other gendered aspects of illness, I do wonder: when getting sick at work got to be too much of a hassle, why did I solve the equation by removing myself as the variable component? I probably could have explained myself more thoroughly or found workplaces more accommodating to my condition, or to diversity and differences more generally.
For me, being self-employed is a natural fit. I’d always wanted to work from home, and I’m fortunate that enough factors in my life made that a relatively painless transition.
People with certain limitations who may already feel shut out of society shouldn’t be expected to self-select out of careers and corporations where their needs won’t be met…
But I’m not convinced that freelancing and self-employment offer the easiest career path for the majority of workers, even though traditional workplace culture has been slow to evolve to accommodate a range of limitations, visible or not. People with certain limitations who may already feel shut out of society shouldn’t be expected to self-select out of careers and corporations where their needs won’t be met, which is sort of what I did without fully questioning why.
People with health conditions and limitations are often the people who are most vulnerable, and many rely on the health insurance coverage and guaranteed salary offered by traditional full-time employment. Statistics show that the percentage of the workforce that freelances is only going to continue to grow as the post-recession economy remains sluggish and companies can save resources by outsourcing work to contractors. On one hand, that seems liberating for some people. But asking those already at risk to invite and endure further uncertainty by working on contract, or to worry about finding and affording their own health benefits, seems like a particularly volatile, unfair situation into which many may feel increasingly forced.
As much as I’m an evangelist for freelancing, I’m also an advocate for being empowered to meet your own needs. It shouldn’t be up to individuals to wage every wage battle on their own. But until there can be more open discussions about the limitations people face in the workplace and better policies to support a wider range of worker, we might have to keep oversharing with our employers, and with each other.
Like this story? Read others about amazing individuals living with conditions at Folks!
Originally published at medium.com