And counting!

This is the longest I’ve gone without a migraine in 40 years.

For those of you just joining us or not playing along at home, I’ve had migraines since I was 18, generally 2 per month. They turned nasty back in 2015, and I started having 12-15 migraines every month. In 2017, I started doing keto, and I weaned myself off all my migraine meds. After about six months, I stopped having monthly migraines, and the cycle spread out to 2-3 migraines per year.

The longest I’d gone before this was 150 days. Generally speaking, I’d have a migraine once every 120-150 days. It was too long of a cycle to figure out what was causing them to occur at that point.

What’s changed that I managed to break through the 150 day barrier? I think there are two things.

One – Aspirin.

When I was having lots of migraines, I was taking aspirin every day to try to fend them off. A lot of aspirin. I stopped taking it when I weaned myself off the migraine meds.

For other people who had done the same – taken a lot of aspirin to deal with the migraines then stopped – when they tried to take aspirin again, they ended up with instant migraines.

I figured I could do without taking any, rather than risk another migraine.

But about 90 days ago, I had a headache that just wouldn’t go away. I’d had it for over 24 hours and it was turning into a migraine. So I figured – why not? I was going to try taking aspirin, because if I didn’t do anything, I was heading toward a pretty nasty migraine.

The aspirin cured that migraine quickly.

I haven’t had to take aspirin for a migraine headache since. I still don’t take it regularly. Just occasionally, like, oh say, last week when I blew out my knee and it had swelled up to twice the size it normally is.

The other reason why I think I’m not having migraines like I used to is because I believe that my hormones are FINALLY starting to calm down some.

This past month was really good. I was sick for the start of October, between my period and having a cold the first week. But that was it. I had a few bad half days. For example, last Thursday, which turned out to be the day before my current period. I was fine for most of the day, but by that evening, I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think straight. Binge watched old episodes of Leverage and played games on my phone. And the first day of my period wasn’t great.

But all of my symptoms are less than they used to be. Instead of having a regular or heavy period with occasional light ones, now they’re mostly light with occasional heavy ones.

So we’ll see how long I can go without having another stinking migraine. Here’s hoping for another 180 days!