My Story: ‘I Finally Got Diagnosed With Migraine and Took Charge of My Health’

This is part 2 of My Story: Migraine, a series where we shed light on what it’s really like to live with a chronic illness. Read part 1 and part 3.

When Bernadette was first diagnosed with chronic migraine, her doctor didn’t tell her very much about it. “I didn’t get any migraine education from the neurologist,” she says. “I didn’t understand that this was a chronic, lifelong neurological disorder and that the attacks are the result of that.”

She also didn’t have much luck treating the condition at first. The neurologist had her try several medications to treat the attacks, but none of them worked. Then, in March 2020, just a few months after Bernadette first got her diagnosis, she contracted a virus that she now believes was COVID-19. There were no tests at the time to confirm it, but she became severely ill for six weeks. “It completely decimated me,” she says.

After the virus passed, the pattern of her migraine attacks changed completely. Instead of lasting anywhere from 3 to 14 days, they were nonstop. She was in constant, severe pain.

At this point, Bernadette was bedridden and losing hope. “I remember being in the dark, in my bed, writhing in pain — on my birthday, on my anniversary — just heartbroken,” she says. At one point, she broke down and thought, “I don't know how to live with this amount of pain.”

Being sick for several weeks finally forced Bernadette to research and learn everything she could about migraine. As an optimistic person, she knew there had to be something that could help. While she was searching for information online, she came across Migraine Strong, a website that provides educational resources for people with migraine, as well as coaching services.

She finally learned that migraine is a neurological disorder — and the idea that she’d been living with a chronic illness changed her perspective. For the first time, Bernadette felt relieved. Even though she was in pain, she now knew that there were resources and treatments out there that could help her.

Still, coming to terms with having migraine disease also meant coming to terms with her limitations. And as much as she loved her job and her students, she decided to go on medical leave after about a year. “I had to finally put my health first,” she says.

Since she was no longer teaching in the classroom, Bernadette finally had the time and knowledge to dedicate herself to treatment. She found acute and preventive migraine medications that help manage her pain.

She also discovered nonpharmaceutical ways to cope, like using neuromodulation devices, which stimulate nerves in the brain to alter pain pathways, and going to acupuncture.

“I have a huge [treatment] toolkit,” she says. “I really believe in a biopsychosocial approach to migraine.”

None of these migraine treatments have been a cure-all — she still has some level of pain every day — but there’s been a significant decrease in the severity and length of her attacks. She’s gone from having month-long severe attacks to three-day severe attacks with moderate pain in between. “The quality of my life is still impacted,” she says. “But now I have better tools to manage.”