Who? What? Where? When? Why? of this blog

November 30, 2013:

Who?
My name is Emily. I'm 29 years old and I was born and raised in Virginia by the most amazing parents in the world.
Professionally I'm a medic, I take care of people...at least I'm supposed to.
I'm a lover, not a fighter as they say. I have awesome parents and sisters. I have this crazy, silly, amazing boyfriend and we have a neurotic, yet loveable dachshund. He has his own blog if you want to read about him.

What?
To date, I've had a migraine headache for 61 days. Sometimes...like today, it's tolerable. I can sit here on my ipad and write and read. Others, I can't even open my eyes for fear I'll start vomiting.
I've had migraines since I was about 4 years old.
The first time I remember getting one, I was sitting at the dinner table at my grandparents house on Christmas. I couldn't finish my dinner because I felt like something was wrong in my head. Being 4, I couldn't express my feelings, so I sat under the table on the floor for a bit...when that didn't work, I went into a spare bedroom and stretched out on a bay window seat and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was dark, and I felt better. It was 1988 and everyone smoked in the house. I believe cigarette smoke  was and still is a migraine trigger for me.

Where?
We live in northern Virginia. So mostly I guess I will be talking about things here, although my neurologist is at the University of Virginia, which is in Charlottesville. I was just hospitalized there for a trial of IV Thorazine, that failed.

When?
At least once a month, every month, since 1988.
At this point, as I mentioned before...every day for the past 60 days and nearly 3x/week for 3 years.

Why?
Why am I blogging about this? Because I have to. People have no idea what life is like for someone with chronic migraines. I am so sick of people referring to it as "just a headache." If it were just a headache, I'd still have my job, I'd still be driving, I'd be able to get up and do the things I love. I wouldn't vomit almost everything I eat, and I wouldn't go through awful, painful treatments just for funsies.
Also...I had been posting "how I was doing," posts on Facebook for the few friends and family who actually cared enough to ask...and I know that for those who DON'T care about it...it's annoying to have someone filling your feed with obnoxious posts about their depressing crap.
So...if you've made it to this blog, you must care, and I appreciate it.


This is not going to be a happy, or funny, or cute blog. I'm going to lay that out for you right now. This is real. This is no bull shit. But this is my life.