The Pain Is In The Brain - migraines

The final diagnosis--made after she visited neurologist Michael Cutrer at Massachusetts General Hospital--was migraine with visual auras. The pain is horrendous, Healy says, but the auras can be worse. "There were times I could be talking to my husband, and I realized I couldn't see his face," she says. Her hallucinations have included "vicious snakes flying through the air; it was terrifying." Healy once passed her dog on the stairs and stopped in bewilderment. "She could have been painted by Picasso during his cubist era," she says. "The image was that distorted."

Headaches have effectively ended Healy's career. To limit their frequency, she has cut out suspected triggers. "As a result, I live a very sterile life," she says. She abstains from all pickled and smoked foods, chocolate, bananas, apples, oranges, and shellfish. Even vitamins can be problematic. When a class of drugs called triptans became available in the early 1990s, Healy used them, but over time their effectiveness dimmed. She now primarily takes an ergotamine called methysergide (See "A Short History of Headache Medications," page 61), but prolonged use can result in heart and lung damage.

"I choose which devil I sleep with-migraines or tissue damage," says Healy. To balance the two, Cutrer prescribes methysergide for six months, followed by two months when Healy takes mainly painkillers-and invariably has a migraine every day. "Migraines can be 100 things to 100 different people," says Healy, who has started a support group for fellow sufferers. "I need to do what I can to help others."

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