How to Embrace the Good Days with Chronic Migraine

Good days with Chronic Migraine, though not pain-free, are vital for nurturing strength

There is no greater high than a sick body feeling well.

I am incredibly happy to say that I know this intimately. After several weeks of bad days and slightly less bad days, I am feeling well, vital, energetic – almost the way a person without chronic illness might feel. The unignorable head pain has shrunk to an irritating hum. The persistent nausea has died down, enough at least to let hunger flood back.

I have seized each day that I have woken up feeling well. Despite hearing many cautions to “not overdo it,” which is actually good advice, I throw caution to the wind. Every day that I’m physically able to, I tie on my running shoes and pick a different mountain trail to call mine.

When my feet are pounding the dust or swerving around rocks or picking my way through dense sagebrush, I am no longer a sick person. When the sun is on my face, I don’t think about Migraine. I don’t think about prevention, triggers, whether or not I’m doing enough (for the record, I am.) I don’t worry about affording my meds or side effects or proposed budget cuts to federal disease research – my only hope for a cure.

Good Days with Chronic Migraine Nurture a Sense of Vitality

When I am running, I simply am. Breath, sweat, dust. I am a part of this world as much as the root of the Jeffrey l leap over or the hermit thrush I share the shade with. When you spend days, weeks, or months inside, sick with Migraine, the outside world seems like a dream. Like a dream, life outside your four walls is maddening in its closeness and unattainability.

It’s hard not to feel trapped. It’s hard not to feel like a prisoner in your own body with an invisible and cruel jailer.

The good days, though, these precious glimpses of health, this is what I life for. This is what every person with a chronic illness lives for – the good days past and the hope for more to come. This is why we restrict our diets, suck down supplements and pills, and spend thousands of dollars a year just on the possibility of progress.

Making it through the bad days with spirit intact is never easy. For me, it has gotten easier – just a little. The miracle that makes it all okay is feeling all the pain, emotional trauma, and unreleased energy of the bad days melt away. As quickly as the sickness ascends it is forgotten – at least mostly. Chronic pain keeps its tendrils wrapped around me every day. The good days with Chronic Migraine are never free of pain – there are no days without Migraine when you’re chronic.

These Are the Days I Live For

But those hours, as fleeting as they are, when I can forget Migraine and feel the strength and vitality of my body – these are the days I live for.

Today is the fourth consecutive day that I have not had a migraine attack by noon. I haven’t had a wellness streak this long in months – I can’t even tell you how many. I have been working my ass off to get here and I’m going to keep working my ass off to stay here. I know that no matter what I do, though, the next attack will hit. I will hunker down, I will grieve, I will endure. I will wait as patiently as I can for my next hours of freedom.

These fleeting good days with Chronic Migraine are an important reminder of my strength – a strength that can be hard to find on bad days. I know it’s in there, though, and I will do my best not to forget.

I will do my best to cultivate my strength like a rare and finicky orchid – so much work , but the end result is so beautiful that it hardly seems real.

Main image: Ryan Alonzo Photography

All other images: Angie Glaser