Migraine Awareness Month Blogging Challenge, Day 4: Large Migraine and Headache Hopes

1. An increase in funding for the study of migraine.
2. Public awareness of this chronic, genetic neurological disorder and its consequences.
3. Medicines developed specifically for migraine disease (and not some off-label product that may or may not work).
1. This may include genetically engineered meds that are created for the needs of a specific person or phenotype.  
4. Compassionate physicians, friends, family, and co-workers.
5. Pain-free days.
6. Living a life without having it revolve around avoidance of migraine triggers.
7. All doctors having a working knowledge of the treatment of migraine.  

Migraine Awareness Month Blog Post #3: Small Headache and Migraine Hopes

My assignment for this post is to name some of the small-ish hopes I have for headache and migraine.

My hope is that I continue to have family and friends who understand and support me when I am not feeling so hot.

I hope that people who have migraine can find a support group or network of friends that will help them understand the disease.

I hope each day that I wake without head pain, and I wish that for you, too.

Migraine and Headache Awareness Month 2015. Day 2: Who Helped you?

Today, the migraine blogging challenge is to name someone who helped me. 

The one person that comes most to mind is my husband, Barry Dehlin.

When I was first diagnosed with chronic migraine, neither of us knew much about it.  He did some literature reviews to find more about it, including the algorithm used by neurologists for trying different preventive medications for migraine.  He pulled up the slack when I was at my most frail and vulnerable.  He never made me feel guilty about being in bed, being crabby, being unpredictable.  

Even now, he knows when I have a migraine before I even tell him, and always asks what he can do to help.  Then he quietly shuts the bedroom door so I can try to sleep.  

Thanks, darlin', for sticking with me through these difficult years. We have definitely addressed the "for better or for worse" part of our marital vows!

Migraine Awareness Month, 2015

June is Migraine Awareness Month, and I am participating by blogging each day, 
using a prompt provided by Migraine and Headache Awareness Month. 
I am 9 days behind, so here I go.

The first prompt is to name my favorite "hope" quote.  

This is not so much a quote, but a poem that has given me inspiration since I was working on my dissertation at Michigan State. It illustrates the benefits of perseverance and always gives me hope. 

Two frogs fell into a deep cream bowl,
One was an optimistic soul;
But the other took the gloomy view,
“We shall drown,” he cried, without more ado.
So with a last despairing cry,
He flung up his legs and said, “Good-bye.”
But the other frog with a merry grin,
said “I can’t get out, but I won’t give in.
I’ll just swim around till my strength is spent,
For having tried, I'll die content.”
Bravely he swam until it would seem
His struggles began to churn the cream. 

On the top of the butter at last he stopped,
And out of the bowl he happily hopped.
What is the moral? ‘Tis easily found:
If you can’t hop out, keep swimming around.

—Walter Knight, Knight’s Master Book of New Illustrations