Hey so someone with chronic migraines is disabled, yall know that right
Like this applies to all “invisible” disabilities in the sense that just bc you can’t see what’s wrong doesn’t mean nothing is wrong or they aren’t disabled but it’s especially the case for chronic migraines
Migraines are NOT just headaches. It’s not just “oof ow my head hurt :(”, Migraines are WHOLE body affair. It’s getting weepy and irritable hours before the pain hits, it’s starting to get clumsy and feeling body aches just before the pain starts, it’s getting stiff because of the aches and sensitive to light and sound because of how heightened senses get.
And when the pain gets, sometimes it is the general image of someone locked in a dark room in bed, which is genuinely awful bc you can’t do anything. You just have to lay there and stew in your pain and no medicine touches it and everything hurts, worst of all your head and there is nothing to focus on other than the pain because any light hurts and any sound hurts.
But sometimes the pain isn’t bad enough for that, or sometimes you have to work or go to school with nails in your head and it’s impossible to focus. Your depth perception gets wonky, you’re clumsy, you slur or stumble over your words because so much of your brain is occupied only by pain. You can’t miss another day of work, you can’t miss the money, but you’re messing up orders or you’re misunderstanding instructions.
And then there’s the after. Postdrome, the migraine hangover. Where the emotional and irritability returns, and you have issues with your stomach, very often leaving you unable to eat or drink without puking. Your neck is stiff, your head feels heavy, your brain is so fogged up that you can barely string together a coherent sentence. Your body aches much worse than before, and you’re exhausted, fatigued to hell and back, and that lasts for 1-3 days after the actual migraine.
Migraines are a multi-day condition that affects EVERY aspect of your fucking life. And medicines that treat the pain very often only lessen the symptoms that occur before and after.
So when I say I am disabled and then I start talking about migraines, I don’t ever want to fucking hear someone say “headaches aren’t disability”. I will actually deck you across the face you fucking prick.
