MIGRAINE WITH EPILEPSY

I suffer terribly from migraine / epilepsy attacks. This has been ongoing for as long as I can remember.

I have found that codeine and focused breathing are the best remedies. When I run out of codeine, just focusing on breathing in deep even rhythms can also break the migraine / epilepsy attack. Mostly its a migraine with partial epileptic symptoms. Occasionally, the epilepsy does become more severe.

Breathing works as we tend to hold our breath when under stress, which blocks oxygen going to the brain.

The other solution is to avoid stress. Avoid anything that is carcinogenic. Exhaust fumes are the worst. Next is cigarette smoke, bright sunlight and noise. Crowded day-time market-places, are hell on earth, and being stuck in traffic is just a nightmare

Dark, quiet, peaceful, relaxed, meditation is the best solution.

If you live in the city, try moving to a village. If I am in a car for 20 minutes, in the sunlight with a smoker, the migraine is 100% guaranteed. I hate cars so badly, and try to be in one no more often than once per month. Sometimes the pain is so bad, I have fantasies at the relief I would feel if I just cracked my skull against a wall to end the pain for once and for all.

On the up side, this has made me fear no pain or anguish that can be inflicted on me by evil in the world, and has made me fearless of death, which would be a soft release from my suffering.

I have never had a migraine BEGIN in the evening, nearly always after the midday sun.

Strangely, one gets used to the physical pain. You learn how to ride out the storm. The hardest part, is the lack of sympathy from others, who castigate me for not driving a car, or wanting to work in busy noisy crowded places. Especially people that are close to me, and can see what it does to me. Smugly they look down on me for wasting my 'talent' by not going into the city. Snorting and sneering and judging me. Smoking marijuana also relieves stress to an extent. Of course the stress of its illegal status, can make things worse too.

The emotional realisation, that people would try and force me or blackmail me into behaviour that causes me so much anguish is in many ways as unbearable as the physical pain itself. The way that they just dismiss my suffering with an air of self-important degradation, and end a friendship or relationship, as a means to emotionally blackmail me into doing those things which are impossible for me to do, just makes the stress, and hopelessness seem so much worse. Thanks to those who have tried to care, even if they eventually want nothing more to do with me because of my 'stubborness', 'laziness', and 'cowardly' avoidance of stress, crowds, and 'business'.

"You should see a doctor", they say. Why? So they can poke me full of needles and take my money? Just not travelling in the car to get to the doctor is 100x more relief than any doctor can do.

Best wishes, to all concerned
Jon Bain
As for my in-laws, I dedicate this thesis / novel: Observing Love