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Welcome to Migraine Heroes. For anyone living with migraine and wondering why
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nothing has fully worked yet, I'm Diane Ducarme. In seven years of working with
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people with migraine, I've learned that no two migraine stories are the same and
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none of them are simple. But your migraine has its own patterns. Here we
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look at them from different angles so you can start recognizing them for
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yourself. A quick note, this is educational. For diagnosis or medication,
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please keep working with your doctor. Now take a deep breath and let's dive in.
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Hello Janelle, thank you so much for making the time. I really, really
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appreciate it. Yes, thank you for having me. So do you want to say a few words
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about you, where you're from, where do you live? So I live in northern Minnesota in
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Hibbing. I am a special education teacher. I just finished my 21st year
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teaching special education and I have two boys, 13 and 15. I'm married and I
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have two dogs. Oh, two dogs. Wow, that's amazing. Very nice, very nice. It is. And
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then in my kind of spare time, something I do that brings a lot of joy is I teach
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some exercise classes. And then about four years ago now, my husband and I
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bought an old ice cream truck. It's actually a delivery vehicle that was
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converted into an ice cream truck. Oh, this is so nice. What is it called? It's
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just called the ice cream truck. I love that. This is so cool. Probably also a
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great life experience for the children. Yes, that was one of our big motivations.
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Okay, in your life, if at some point migraines entered, do you want to tell us
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what that looked like for you? Like around what age? I was 32, could give or
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take a year or two. And I had my two boys, they were very little. My youngest
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was probably not a year old at that time. And I was working, I was teaching
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special education in elementary school. And I was reading a test on a computer
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to a student. But the words that I saw weren't the words that were coming out
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of my mouth. So I started to get pretty nervous. It was just very strange. Like
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I could see the word have on the screen, but I couldn't say it something else
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like will or I don't know something else came out of my mouth. And I started to
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get nervous. And then I had paraprofessionals in my classroom, but I
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couldn't remember their names. It just would not come out of my mouth. Again, I
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knew who they were, but I couldn't find the words. So everybody kind of looked
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at me and said, you need to go in. So like, okay, I'll just call and make an
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appointment. So I called the clinic and they said, um, no, you actually need to
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go into the ER. And I don't know what of me but okay, I'll drive myself to the
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ER, my classroom is covered. I will drive myself to the ER. And you know, they
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they do triage. So you're sitting there and you're trying to talk and I couldn't
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remember my birthday. I had a hard time doing my signature. So they immediately
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thought, well, maybe I'm having a stroke or an aneurysm. And I just remember being
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very scared, thinking kind of like, this was it in a sense, but everybody there
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was so kind. And I felt very cared for. My husband was out of town for work. And
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my parents showed up. Thankfully, I lived close to them. So they showed up and they
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know that they were around. And I just remember the nurse being very caring. And
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you know, that had the test done. The odd thing was, is I wasn't, I wasn't really
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in pain. I just felt very tired. Kind of like, I'll say this probably a lot as we
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discuss my migraines, but like I was hit by a truck and just frustrated not
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understanding what was happening to me. But all the tests came back and they
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said that I had late onset acute migraine.
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When did you hear about that word?
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A little. I just thought that's what this is. This seems so different than
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everything I experienced. Like I could not find my words, not sign my name from a
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migraine. Now am I going to have migraines? This isn't how I have ever
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heard about migraines. You know, when you, you see commercials or you watch, you
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know, TV shows or you talk to somebody who has them and they have maybe this
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light aura and this extreme pain and they're in bed. And here I was not
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knowing, my words weren't matching. So I just didn't know what to expect, I guess.
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Okay. And so a few days pass and now you see your GP?
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Mm-hmm. And she just goes over all the results and I just kind of wanted to
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wait and see, you know, how often I would get them. If I would start to notice
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some triggers, she just kind of wanted to wait it out.
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Okay. And then what happened after that?
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You know, it's honestly hard to remember, but I do know that I started to get
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migraines more often. You know, my doctor said to really watch for an aura and as
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soon as you feel an aura, you know, take an over-the-counter medication and have
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some rest. But I never really experienced an aura. I would just start to get some
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pain, but mostly exhaustion was my thing. Exhaustion was really maybe my aura, now
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looking back. And that feeling again of being hit by a truck, just full
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exhaustion, a mild headache. And then, of course, oh, it's just a headache. I'm going
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to keep working, I'm going to keep playing with the kids and going about our
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normal routine and maybe eventually take an over-the-counter medication and get
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some sleep. So that seemed to be the pattern for quite a while. And then I
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would have some episodes that would last for a long time and would be pretty
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exhausting. And then I would go in and it would get treated more like they were
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giving medication at the doctor's office to help. And then, you know, that would
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wear me out pretty good, so I would have to go home and rest. And then things just
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became more frequent after that.
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And so little by little that creeps into your life and it starts to be more
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frequent and more intense. Yeah, friends for lack of a better word in your life
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or foe. Yeah. Hey, welcome. Yeah, not quite. And so it starts to be with you
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more often. And so more medication, a bit more, you know, from over-the-counter
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to prescribed. Yeah. And I mean, how does your family, the three men in your
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My husband worked out of town a lot. So I was stubborn because a lot of the
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medication and the protocol from my doctor was things that would make me go
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to sleep, like to really find rest and to be in a dark room and sleep. And I was
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so uncomfortable with that. I also had trouble reaching out to my parents who
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were very readily offering their help. And I was not good about that. When my
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husband was home, I was better about it. And I know, you know, oh, no, mom, mom
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has a migraine. Leave her be. Mom has a migraine. Leave her be. So I could tell
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it was starting to kind of impact them. And then I know as time went on, my
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youngest especially would be like, oh, no, you have a migraine. You know, like,
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oh, that means you're down for the count and we can't go do anything. He would
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try to be so caring. And he was the one who would bring me, you know, an ice
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pack or something. But it was just like, oh, no. Oh, no. Not again. Not again.
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And so that goes on. How frequent does it become? How did it speak?
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Pretty bad. And I also started getting hormonal migraines too. So I would say by
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the time that I reached out to you, I was having three to four migraines a week.
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Yeah, that's a lot. And so you said hormonal and you need that was me
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reading our notes and your profile hormonal migraines. You also identify
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sort of identify some triggers as well. Yeah. MSG was one of the ones for you.
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Yeah, MSG. And that was a different type. That was an instant like, oh, my head
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hurts so bad. I don't want to, you know, you don't want to move to get the ice
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pack or to take anything. That was just an instant migraine, which I found. I
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had fish fry out at a restaurant and after eight, I just sat in the car with
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this horrible migraine and it took me a little while to figure it out. But yeah,
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that became a trigger. So many things actually became a trigger. And so how
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long did that phase last for a couple of months? The phase of so many migraines
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several months, several months. Yeah. And something that motivated me to
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continue moving forward in my quest to find help was I started to get vertigo
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as well as my migraines. So that was that. And my warning sign like, oh, it's
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coming. And I finally had to call for a ride home from work. Yeah.
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And so then somehow you decide, hey, you know what, we're not going to do that
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for many years or many more months. I'm going to I'm going to go and try to find
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help. How did you come across my work or how did you what did you decide to do to
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It was coupled with how I was feeling. And also I did go and meet with my
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neurologist and I got sent home with a literal grocery bag full of medication
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to try. I'm sensing a theme with myself that I don't want to do things that will
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make me down for the count. And a lot of the medications that were in that bag
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would really, really make me down for the count. And I already felt like I was
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missing out on so much with my family that I just wanted to see if there was
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another way before I went down that down that road so intently or intensely, I
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guess. And so I spend a lot of time distracting myself with chores by
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listening to podcasts or walking or whatever it might be. I listen to a lot
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of podcasts and I'm always, you know, let's see here, perimenopause and
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migraines, hormonal migraines, increase in migraines, and just trying to find
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find that. And I, I forget who, what is I think it was like a perimenopause, my
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podcast that I had listened to, and you were a guest. And I remember you saying
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so many things that, how does she know? How does she know that I experienced
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this? How does she know that this is related to this? Because I've always
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suspected that there's some type of correlation. And, and then I, I'm going
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to take her quiz, like, I'm going to take the quiz. I couldn't believe the
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questions. And I just felt like you had some type of window into my life. You
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know, everything that you search or other podcasts that I've listened to,
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and I've gone on people's, you know, whether it's their Instagram or, or
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their episode webpage or whatever, never really asked me so many specific
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questions about my everyday life, my monthly cycles, my kid, like the birth
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of my, you know, like how all of that went. And then I thought, I, I think I
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need to schedule a time to meet. There might be answers here because I've never
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felt so understood. And then we met. I was very touched when we met, like I was
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touched you reaching out. I don't know, you know, when I meet people, I'm, I love
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these conversations. They're very deep. It's a really, it's a moment for
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connection. It's a massive moment for empathy. Like I almost have to, after
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each conversation, reassure my buddy, no, we don't have all of these diseases.
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We're just helping people who do like almost have to have that moment of, it's
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a bit also the same. Like you had a beautiful smile when we started the
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conversation as I, and as I'm taking you through the dark side of your life, I
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see your body, you know, start to be super, super sad. And I think after this
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conversation, you have to acknowledge, Hey, this is over. This is the past.
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Because it sort of, these things affect us. It affects me too. And I love these
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conversations. And I vividly remember meeting with you, you know, and really
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having the really deep empathy for everything you had gone through and the
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lack of explanations and, and how your life was also completely upside down.
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Because you had everything before some people are not born with migraines, but
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they, it comes really early in their life. Like for you, you had an amazing
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life and then suddenly everything in your world was rocked. Yeah. It was a
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beautiful moment of connection.
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Like every time you would chat with me, I just literally felt like a warm hug.
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Like just very, very understood.
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And you could be quite harsh on yourself. Like I haven't done this perfectly or
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haven't. And I would send you, I think these messages saying consistency beats
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perfection. You're doing great Janelle. Like just keep going. You're doing just
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fine. I'm not asking you to be perfect. I'm just asking you to, you know, pick
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yourself up and eat some of the foods and just go gentle and be patient and
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observe your body and report when it does better and report when there's
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something that bothers you. Because we can see like we follow about a hundred
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people in parallel. So we can see how you're all, you know, learning to walk
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again, standing up again in your lives, you know, joining the light again, like
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just being again yourselves. And so we see that journey, which is a really weird
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journey, I guess, on the receiving end where your symptoms disappear, but in a
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very organic manner.
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You know, the boys would just see me resting or something. They're like, do
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you have a migraine? No, I don't. You know, I'm pretty slim. I have like, when
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was the last time you had a migraine? It's been like a week, you know? Oh, you
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mean you're just hanging out in bed, watching TV or reading a book? Can I
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come in here? Yeah. You can come and, you know, sit with me or yeah, I'm okay. I
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remember it was funny. We took a family trip with my parents and my brother
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recently fishing and I was just tired. It was a really rough school year. So I
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just took a nap. I took a really long nap and everybody was tiptoeing around
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me. Oh, you must have had a really bad migraine. Are you okay? What do you know?
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I'm like, no, I just really just took a nap and it felt super good. I'm so
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thankful. And if anybody is even questioning it, it's worth it to do this
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for yourself. I know that's really hard to do, especially as women, we want to do
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things for others. And you think we can, you know, whether we can think our way
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out of it or, or just try harder or whatever. You're here because you need
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support. And if you want more to your life, you have to do it. You don't have
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to, but oh my goodness, I just didn't expect in really this short amount of
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time to be feeling this.
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Do you want to share a bit with you how long it took for you to already feel
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better? Like when was it the first time maybe one of your sons noticed that you
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didn't have a migraine for a while?
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I'd say it was almost just a few months in.
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Yeah, I think so too.
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Yeah, it really was. It was a quick turnaround. It just, it felt real. It was
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like, I have a migraine. Okay, now the next day or, you know, the next few hours
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I'm back to life again. And they would see me come out of the room and, you know,
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ready to, you know, help with whatever they were doing instead of just being
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down for the night and calling it good. And it really happened quickly where I
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went from pretty much feeling like a haze of a migraine for half the week to, you
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know, one and done, really. You know, that was a big part of it. I felt like it was
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just never ending. It was just always, you know, a different level of a migraine.
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And then I'm like, I only had one migraine this week, you know?
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Well, a huge thank you, Janelle. And I wish you a ton of fun with your boys, with
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your husband, with your ice cream truck.
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And with all of the teaching and the beautiful children, that your beautiful
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energy will impact.
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That's all for today. I hope this episode helped you notice some new things. If
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you'd like to keep exploring your patterns, you can find us on
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MigraineHeroes.com. Your body has a story to tell. Let's keep listening. I will be
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back with you soon.
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MigraineHeroes.com
