On the outside, I was living a happy childhood, but on the inside, my body was going bonkers. As told through my first column, the mere smell of chocolate made my head feel like it was going to explode.
But chocolate wasn’t the only monster that brought on this horrifying pain that made me lie still in a dark room. No, even without a morsel in my body, Mr. Headache and Mrs. Puke would still come to play. And they did not play nice!
What was going on with my body? And how can I make it better so I can go outside to play or continue cheering on the Fleetwood Indians? It was time to get to the bottom of this.
Of course having the loving, helicopter parents that I do, we weren’t stopping until we got answers.
And so the tests and the visits to all the specialists began. I’m talking about every test possible – CT scan, MRI, x-ray, EEG, blood work, allergy tests – you name it, I got it. But it helped ruled out the bigger and scarier things.
The diagnosis? Migraines … Migraines at 7 years old?
“It’s not typical for kids to get migraines this frequent and debilitating,” the neurologist explained, but it was definitely what was causing my body to rebel against childhood normalcy.
I left with a handful of prescriptions for both daily preventative and rescue pain medicines. But what caught my attention, was the list of food triggers that they handed us in a much more casual way on our way out the door.
The list looked as long as my wish list that I sent to the North Pole every year. Was it really possible that I couldn’t eat all these foods? What’s left to eat?
But it also made me wonder if I discovered the answers to these questions, could it help me feel like a normal kid again?
