It soon became clear to me, but no-one else, with the possible exception of my mother to some degree, that I suffered at school. It was not from bullying, which came later at Grammar School, but from what nowadays is known as migraine. Severe migraine. Migraine didn't exist in the forties. One had headaches and they were regarded as a woman's complaint. Men didn't have them, and neither did schoolboys. My experience was that I could not look at black print on white pages for more than ten minutes without getting a blinding sharp pain in my head.
And it didn't go away when I stopped reading. The trigger had been pressed and I would have to go through the whole ghastly process. This was raging head pain that lasted around twenty-four hours and made me feel sick. Sound and light became unbearable and I just wanted to bury my head under a pillow to shut out the world. If all this sounds a little extreme, believe me, this was how it was, and it stayed that way until after I was over forty years old.
It made school work very difficult. It made everything difficult. But I had to try to keep up with the pack, even though the going was tough. University was out of the question, although I did manage a one year course at what is now known as The Royal Agricultural University. It was a College when I went.
My mother, God bless her, realised that something was wrong with me, but what could she do? Take me to the doctor? She did, many times. The answer was always the same. Take him home and give him an aspirin. Sometimes I was taken to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where I was led into small hot rooms after long waits, asked to lie on a bed while rubber nets were stretched over my head! Electrodes were inserted under this unbecoming stretchy hairnet until I looked like Medusa, and I was asked to lay back and keep still. The medic would then sit across the room behind a screen, the lights would be turned down I'd be asked apparently randomly to close my eyes, open my eyes, take a deep breath, hold it, close my eyes, breathe out, open my left eye, close it, open my right eye, or so I remember. Eventually I'd be put back together and packed off back to the consulting room where I'd be looked at with some disdain.
Take him home,they'd tell my mother, and give him an aspirin.
As anyone who suffers from migraine will know, this was entirely useless advice. Migraine didn't exist, so it was thought, hence the inappropriate advice.
Migraine continued not to exist until I my mid teens.
By then things were happening. People who mattered must have been reporting similar symptoms to me, I suspect. It was beginning to dawn on the medical profession that there was a problem out there in general public land. I expect work days were being lost and industry was complaining.
The Migraine Trust was founded in 1965.
I subscribed, and it marked a small turning point in my life. Reading letters from other sufferers in the Trust's newsletter was an eye opener. I was not alone. I was not a malingerer, a tag I had acquired in some circles. I really did have a medical condition. My mother, a former children's nurse, continued to fight for me. She even got me an appointment to see a migraine specialist in Harley Street. But this was still early days. I guess that there was much experimentation going on. I was given some pills and told to take them whenever a migraine attack occurred. I did. They made my kidneys ache and knocked me out for 24 hours. I stopped taking them.
I continued to have severe migraine attacks until I reached my mid forties, on average half of every week would be spent fighting them while trying to lead a normal life. To use a term, they were a drag. They affected every aspect of my life. Everything. It was difficult, to say the least. But by my mid-forties I was beginning to win the battle. The attacks were becoming milder and less frequent. Now I hardly ever get them. It's taken one heart attack and a life sentence of daily pill taking, but hey! I'm walking and talking. Life is good.
I'm alive and happy.
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