Patient perspectives: Living with chronic migraine

Migraine is actually the number one cause of disability among women ages 18 to 50.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Tell us more about you know how your migraine road began.

I had my first migraine attack at age five, so I really don't know life without migraine.

And as an adult, it grew into being chronic and almost daily. And that's basically where I'm at today.

Very similar to Sarah, I started around the age of five. And that was just kind of my life. I accepted it.

My mom dealt with it, but it's definitely been a long journey since. When did you feel that you got a proper diagnosis

of chronic migraine? Yeah, I would say it wasn't until, like, the age of, like, 18 to 17, when I actually, like, went to my first neurologist.

And that's kind of when like my whole journey began of trying preventative medication and all the different solutions that are on the market.

As an adult, it became chronic and daily for me. So I wasn't surprised about the diagnosis.

I am grateful that there are a lot of migraine medications that are specifically for the migraine brain now. But at the same time now, I still have not found the key.

So I kind of am in this kind of limbo phase right now. But what I wish I would have known was that, once you become chronic,

it's hard to dial it back. I'm a migraine sufferer myself, which is what led me to go into the field. There's a lot of sort of these unknowns,

that people are just not aware of migraine. And I guess going through your guys' experiences, or you think you wish that most health care providers knew

about chronic migraine. One of the main things is just being able to diagnose it early on.

Like you said, there was really a lack of education when it comes to chronic migraines.

I think very common to what Amara said, I think finding a neurologist-- and even more, getting a headache specialist-- is just near impossible.

So not having general practitioners be able to diagnose or figure these things out,

I think there are a lot of people that just are not getting served the way that they need to be.