Life-shattering: The debilitating curse of chronic migraines

GILLIAN Paterson should have been at university, enjoying the freedoms that student life brings as a variety of exciting opportunities opened up in front of her. Instead she was lying in bed in her parents' Dumfries home, paralysed by pain, her only company a wet towel draped across her forehead.

She would lie like that for two or even three days, with the curtains closed, the lights off, unable to hold a conversation and barely able to think, as she waited for the pain brought on by chronic migraine to subside.

"Lots of things go through your head at times like that," she recalls. "Such as 'I've had enough. I can't take any more.' But most of the time it was like a mental paralysis.

"You are just consumed by pain. You just want to get better and try to think of things that might help, but they don't really."

Paterson, 40, from Jordanhill in Glasgow, is one of 70,000 Scots who suffer from chronic migraines, which means she suffers 15 debilitating headaches a month or more.

The migraines can last days at a time and symptoms include visual disturbances, nausea and vomiting, sensitivity to light, noise and smells, and weakness or numbness of the limbs.

Chronic migraines can stop people working, driving, taking holidays and doing other things people take for granted. Twenty-eight per cent of sufferers worry their boss will not believe them if they call in sick, while a third feel they are letting their colleagues down when they do. In fact, the condition is so common that it affects almost one in five women in the UK.

Paterson admitted she would try to work twice as hard when she was well to try and compensate for the times when she was sick.

She was first diagnosed when she was 20, and was forced to give up her hopes of pursuing a university degree in French and business computing, and going on to live and work in Paris - a dream she had held since primary school.

It was after a successful kidney transplant, to cure problems caused by a virus, that the first migraine struck.

Having already suffered ill-health, which forced her to leave university, she appeared to be back on track and was contemplating continuing her studies from her hospital bed when she was struck down.

She recalls: "I can remember it vividly. It will be 20 years ago on Monday. The pain started on the right side of my head, in the temple over my eye. It was a horrible, sickly pain. I remember vomiting repeatedly.

"It changed sides (of the head]. I felt absolutely awful and could not move. It gradually started to get better, but it was a full two days of sitting in constant pain and, the thing is, that's as good as it ever got."Any hopes she had of returning to university to finish her course evaporated as she was forced to move back in with her parents in Dumfries.

"I had just wanted to get on with my life. I was focused on leaving university the following year and finding work. I had always wanted to go to Paris and never been. I had studied French since primary - I was desperate to go."

A few years later she would finally get to Paris but, as she was still battling migraine problems, it was a depressing experience that reminded her of the life she could have had.

It was the days before the internet and e-mail which, combined with her debilitating new condition, left her feeling cut off and lonely. She says: "I was back living with mum and dad. It was a bit of a shock to the system.

"Everyone I had been in school with had moved on. It was a very isolating experience.

"I would plan to go on holiday or have a special occasion coming up and then I'd get a migraine, so I couldn't go."

She started studying from home, enrolling in an Open University course that she could do in her own time, fitting around the migraines. "At that time I didn't think it would be long term," she says. "I think I thought it would go away, but it just didn't.

"For the first six months I would get one migraine a month. I went to the GP and got painkillers, but they didn't do any good.

"As time went on the symptoms became more pronounced. I had visual problems - if someone had a highly patterned wallpaper then the pattern would start to run.

"Some people get flashing lights, I didn't but felt my eyesight would lose focus so I couldn't see clearly. These would be the little things before the really bad pain would come.

"Then I could not eat. My stomach felt like it was getting bigger and bigger. I would take a sip of water and then vomit for five or six hours. And the migraines got longer - they'd last for three days now, rather than two."

The World Health Organisation says migraines are among the world's 20 most disabling conditions, but little is known about them, apart that it is a genetic disorder, thought to affect 18 per cent of adult women and 6 per cent of adult men in the UK.

It is generally understood to be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and tends to affect people with what is known as a hyper-excitable brain.

In the early days, all Paterson was prescribed with were painkillers, which did little to prevent the onslaught of migraines.

When she was finally prescribed a drug which worked - Sumatriptan, which reduces the inflammation of blood vessels that triggers the migraine - she found the migraines became more frequent, and she was increasingly reliant on the medicine.

However, now she has been given fresh hope from an unlikely source. Botox, which is better known as a cosmetic treatment, is being offered as a migraine cure. In a trial, patients who suffered from 19.1 days of migraine a month, suffered 8.2 less following treatment. A separate placebo group suffered 0.2 less.

Just before Christmas, Paterson had her first Botox treatment. She had 33 injections to the head, neck and shoulders, paralysing the muscles so pain signals can't pass to the brain.

In the subsequent months, the amount of drugs she needed to control her migraines were cut in half and she has now undergone a second treatment. She hopes that Botox will help her manage the condition, as she can safely have three treatments a year, but is reticient to talk of a cure.

"When you have had migraines for as long as I have - and as severe - the idea of a cure is like a dream. It's probably unlikely, but I would love to be proved wrong."

However, she is keen to better manage the condition for the sake of her husband Alastair, 50, and their two sons, Ruaridh, ten, and Callum, five. Both their children were born after difficult pregnancies.

She says: "I had been very reliant on the medication and when I had my first son I suddenly realised I couldn't take anything except for pain relief tablets, such as paracetamol.

"On a couple of occasions the migraines got so bad that I vomited continuously for two days. I had to be taken to hospital to be given an anti-vomiting drug."

Amazingly, this was the easier pregnancy. She explains: "A few years later we thought we'd have another one, but the experience was different. I had a headache the whole time It was a lot worse. I was off work three months - I didn't have any time off first time."

Raising two boys has been difficult at times when she is frequently laid low by migraines.

She says: "When I'm well I want to go out. I love life and love sharing new experiences. But sometimes I just can't.

"For them, it's 'why'. And I can't tell them why. I think it's affected me in other ways too.

"Now and then one will say to me, 'Mummy, I've got a sore head,' and it sends shivers down my spine. There's no reason to believe he has the condition, but it can be hereditary."She has been helped by the support she has received from her own mother. Paterson says: "Mum moved near me in 2000, just after my first son was born and still lives there. She has pretty much been through the worst of the migraine with me over the 20 years.

"She made sure I took my medication when I've been debilitated, ensured I didn't get dehydrated, gone out on numerous occasions to the chemist to get prescriptions when I couldn't get out of bed, called the doctor when I was so bad that no medication actually worked and I was demented with pain, collected the children from nursery and school when I couldn't and looked after them until my husband returned from work.

"I don't know what I'd have done with- out her."