Headaches

Warning: this is a little self-indulgent, but it was necessary at the time. 

 

So, disclaimer, things are much better than they were when I drew this comic about a month ago. My doctor had put me on a crazy anti-seizure medicine in hopes it would help with my migraines. Not only did it not help with the headaches, but I had really bad side-effects. I had trouble thinking and focusing, I would forget words all the time which made it very difficult to hold conversations, I was running into things while walking, I lost weight because I would forget to eat for a whole day, my fingers would tingle all the time like my hands were falling asleep, and I was having panic attacks. I was on this for a little over a month and for that month it became really hard to deal with daily life because now I was not only in pain but I felt like my brain was failing me.
It took so much energy just to get through work that I didn't really have energy for anything else so I mostly stopped hanging out with people because it was too hard to hold a conversation. I didn't go right back to my doctor to be taken off of it because I no longer trusted myself and I thought, maybe this is just what I'm always like. The headache specialist I started seeing this month took me off the medicine right away and things got better fast. Now that I'm seeing this specialist I feel much more hopeful that the headaches will pass with hopefully as few unobtrusive medications as possible.
I wasn't going to post this one originally because it just felt too personal, but I also wasn't really talking to people about what I was going through at the time so I will share now.