nz Seae and om, Capi © 237 by a iin ‘Alseer ere Dene i Coady D8 Palen cai bse n93 ySmon Set Fer 0 Grou eri een 99 Now fae ps spe nae fm nd am TEL He ly ig he lye Sh kom ant by bs Lm Coy © 8 i er ety by os spi 8351 ese, ‘gt © 857 by Kah Supa Reed wth che emo of We Lara “Mn Dae iy The Denn Copyright © 1957 by Dore ry of Cnr Cine Nender 0906 Doig Coy Feng astm For Ear McGaarn, and for Lous WattaceJoan Didion THE WHITE ALBUM —= = Farrar, Straus and Giroux NEW YORKIn Bed Tees, UR, sometimes five times # month, T spend the day in bed with a migraine headache, insen- sible to the world around me. Almost every day of every month, between these attack, [feel the sudden Invationa irritation and the fash of blood into the ce- ‘ebral arteries which tell me that migraine ison is way. land [take certain drags to aver its aval. If did not take the drugs, I would beable to function perhaps one day in four. The physiological eror called migraine i, in bit, centeal tothe given of my life, When I was 5, Ae, even 25, Lused to think that T could rid myself of thisleror by simply denying it, character over chemi- tty. |"Do you have headaches sometimes? frequently? nevi?” the application forms would demand. “Check One|” Wary ofthe tap, wanting whatever It was that the puccessfl circumnavigation ofthat particular form ‘ould bring (a fob, a scholarship, the respect of man- Kind and the grace of God), I would check one. "Some- times," I would le. That ie fact spent one or two days ‘week almost unconscious with pain seemed a shame- ful secret, evidence not merely of some chemical infe FHonty but ofall my bad attitudes, unpleasant tempers, wrongthink For Thad no brain tumor, no eyestrain, no high blood pressure, nothing wrong with meat all: [simply had migraine headaches, and) migraine headaches 168 In Bed were, as everyone who did not have them knew, ima inary. I ought migraine then, ignored the waminge it ‘sent, went to school and later to work inspite oft sat through lectures in Middle English and presentations to advertisers with involuntary tears running down the right side of my face, threw up in washrooms, atum- bled home by inatine, emptied ice trays onto my bed and tried to freeze the pain in my ight temple, wished only fora neurosurgeon who would dos lobotomy on house cal, and cursed my imagination Tt was a long time before T began thinking mechanistically enough to accept migraine for what it ‘was: something with which I would be living, the way some people lve with diabetes. Migraine ia something more than the fancy of a neurotic imagination Iti an essentially hereditary complex of symptoms, the most frequently noted but by no means the most unpleasant of which is vascular headache of blinding severity, suffered by a surprising numberof women, a fae num ber of men (Thomas Jefferson had migraine, and s0 did Urysses 8. Grant, the day he accepted Le's surrender), and by some unfortunate children as young as {wo Years old. (Chad my frst when I was eight. It came on Gating e fre drill atthe Columbia Schoo! in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was taken fist home and then to the infirmary at Peterson Fleld, where my father was stationed. The Air Corps doctr prescribed an enema) ‘Almost anything can trigger & specific attack of mic rane: stress, allergy, fatigue, an abrupt change in barometric pressure, a contretemps over 4 parking ticket, A flashing light, A fire dil. One inherits, of course, only the predisposition. In other words Iapent yesterday in bed with s headache not merely because of my bad attitudes, unpleasant tempers and wrong- 169Sosourns think, but because both my grandmothers had mic ane, my father has migraine and ny mother has Fhprin. No one knows precisely what i that is inher ited. The chemisty of mignine, however, seme fo have some conection with he nerve heenone named serotonin, which i natray present inthe Ds. The fmount of serotonin in the Mood fas sharply a the Get of migraine, and one migaine drug. ether fhe, or Samar, seems to have some eect on ser {onin, Methyergide ia derivative of oergicacd {act Sandor Pharmaceutics fit synthesized USD25 while looking fr s mipealoe cur), ands se i enmed about with so many conreindctons and se ete that most doctor prescribe i oni in the ‘mow incapacating caves. Metysergid, when Ht i crib, taken dally as a preventive nes pe ‘tnive which works fr some peope fasion tusine trate, which hep t conti the sel if blood vetels Goring the "ure the period which inmost caes precedes the sctl headache Once an aac is under way, howere, no ru touche it Migsne giver some people mid falas tions ermporaiy Bis eters, shows up tony as a headache bat a8 ¢ gsrointestial disturbance, 2 nfl seratvity to al sensory sma, an sbrpt Sverpowering aie, «stoke aphasia, anda ap ling inal fo mace even the moat routine conn Troe. When f mma mine aura (or some people the aura ss fiten minute, for others sever ur), {willdrve through red ight le the Rouse ey, spl whatever am hollng love he sity to foes ny ever tame coherent sentences and general give the a> ‘esrance of beng on Gags ordi. The actual herd 70 In Bed ache, when it comes, brings with it chil, sweating, ‘nausea, a debility that seems to stretch the very limite of endurance. That no one dies of migraine seems, t0 someone deep into an atack, an ambiguous blessing. ‘My husband also has migraine, which is unfor- tunate for him but fortunate for me: pechaps nothing 0 tends to prolong an stack asthe accusing eye of some: fone who has never had a headache. “Why not take & couple of aspirin,” the unafficted will ny from the doorway, or "Yd have a headache, too, spending a beautiful day Uke this inside. with all the shades drawn.” All of us who have migraine sulfer nat only ‘rom the attacks themselves but from this common con vietion that we are perversely refusing to cure ourseives bby taking a couple of asprin, that we are making our selves sick, that we “bring it on ourselves.” And in the most immediate sense, the sense of why we have 4 headache this Tuesday and not last Thursday, of ‘course we often do. There certainly is what doctors cll ‘4 “migraine personality,” and that personality tends to be ambitious, snveatd, intolerant of eror, rather rigidly organized, pertectionist. “You don't look like a migraine personality,” « doctor once said to me, "Your hair's messy. But I suppose you're a compulsive housekeeper.” Acually my house ia kept even more negligently than my hair, but the doctor was right nonetheless: perfectionism can also take the form of spending most of a week writing and rewriting and not writing a single paragraph, ‘But not all perfectioniste have migraine, and not all migrainous people have migraine personalities, We donot eacape heredity. have tried in most ofthe avail able ways fo escape my own migrainous heredity at fone point I learned to give myself two daly injections mSosounns Sr histamine with a hypodermic needle, even though the needle so frightened me that hed to close my eyes ‘hen I did it), But I stil have migraine. And Ihave learned now to lve with it, eared when to expect t, ‘how to outwit it, even ow to regard it, when it does come, as more friend than lodger. We have reached 2 certain understanding, my migraine and I. It never ‘comes when Iam in ral trouble. Tellme that my house is bumed down, my husband has left me, that there is sgunfighting in the streets and panic in the bank, and Twill not respond by getting 4 headache. I comes in- stead when Tam fighting not an open but guerila war with my own life, during weeks of small household confusions, lost laundry, unhappy help, canceled ap- ppintments, on days when the telephone rings too ‘much and I get no work done and the wind Is coming ‘up. On days lke that my friend comes uninvited, [And once tomes, now that Iam wise i its ‘ways, Ino longer fight it. Iie down and lett happen. At Gt every small apprehension is magnified, every {ciety 4 pounding tenor, Then the pain comes, and | Goncentate ony on that. Right there isthe usefulness ‘of migraine, therein that imposed yoga, the concentra: tion on the pain. For when the pain recede, ten oF twelve hours later, everything goes with tall the hid: den resentment, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the faser have emerged intact, There is a pleasant convalescent eu pphoria. I open the windows and fel the air, eat grate- fully, sleep well. U notice the particular nature of ‘ower in a glass on the stair landing. Tcount my blese- ings 1968 On the Road Where are we heading, they asked in al the tele- vision and radio studios. They asked it in New York and Los Angeles and they asked it in Boston and Wash ington and they asked it in Dallas and Houston and (Chicago and San Francisco. Sometimes they made eye contact as they atked it. Sometimes they closed their ‘eyes as they asked it. Quite often they wondered not just where we were heading but where we were heed: Ing "as Americans,” ot “at concemed Americans,” of “as American women,” of, on one occasion, “ae the ‘American guy and the American woman.” never learned the answer, nor did the answer mater or one of the eerie and liberating aspects of broadcast di course is that nothing one say will alter in the lightest flther the form or the length ofthe conversation: Our ‘voices in the studios were those of manic ators as signed todo three-minute, four-minute, seven-minate Improvs. Our faces on the ronitors were those of con- cerned Americans, On my way to one of those studios in Botton | had seen the magrolias bursting white down Marlborough Street. On my way to another in Dallas 1 had watched the highway lights blazing and dimming pink against the big dawn sky, Outside one studio in Houston the alternoon heat was sinking into the deep primeval green of the place and outside the next, that night in Chicago, snow fell and ghitered in ms