I had been on a train for the past two days.

Which isn’t that much of a hassle, usually. But these particular two days turned out to be much more of a hassle than I could’ve anticipated, or maybe I did anticipate.

Since being on a fairly good number of such decent-length journeys - given the fact that my University and Home are both at opposite two corners of this fairly large nation, I have experienced many things and have a general understanding and expectations of how these journeys might end up. Among such expectations are a few, that I’m quite dreadful of.

One such expectation came true this time.

I was in my early teens when I was diagnosed with migraines, though the circumstances and the procedures of that diagnosis might be considered questionable. Nonetheless, I was haunted by recurring headaches, which had become pretty much a part of my daily routine.

One could say that this Migraine situation has improved quite significantly over the years, I do not face such headaches daily, but at most once or twice a week, though once a month I have a Migraine attack which makes me feel like splitting my head open.

Sadly the frequency of this has increased to twice a month, and one such day was yesterday, and thus that day was quite a terrible one, this was one of my severest attacks in the past few months.

Leaving that story aside, Migraine is a terrible condition to have, and what’s even more terrible is that we don’t even have a clear understanding of its underlying causes. Genetic, environmental, and several other factors can be considered while considering the cause of this terrible affliction.

Migraine headaches are generally unilateral, i.e., occurring on one side of the head, though they can very well occur on both sides and are mostly throbbing or pulsating in nature, the pain can be severe enough to hamster daily activities and can last from few hours to several days.

These attacks happen in phases, though I found various descriptions of these phases throughout the internet, the following phases are the ones that are common among all:

Prodrome could be considered the warning phase, it is like when the water recedes before the tsunami, you feel irritable, crave food, feel depressed, and several other symptoms that are mostly correlated with “not feeling right”.

This is then followed by the Aura phase, though only one-third of the individuals with migraine go through this phase, this is also one of the phases that quite fascinates me, since I have experienced this phase a lot when I was young, though these aren’t that frequent nowadays. This phase is characterized by disturbances such as numbing, tingling, difficulty speaking, impaired vision, and as in my case seeing zigzag lines, bright circles like blindspots, etc.

This is followed by the attack which might make you feel like ending it all sometimes. Pulsating and throbbing pain, which won’t let you lay still. Sleep becomes an extremely difficult task even though you are plenty exhausted. You can’t open your eyes nor can you keep them closed in peace. Light becomes torture for you, and so does sound, adding to the sensitivity to smell, nausea, and vomiting, living becomes plenty difficult.

Well from my experience if this could be artificially induced, a severe case of Migraine would be a great torture tool.

Finally, comes the Postdrome Phase, for some this is as bad as the headache phase, after the pain recedes the individual might feel fatigued, drained, and lethargic for a few hours to several days.

Even though migraine is a pain (literally), people learn to live with it somehow. However, the mystery behind this terrible ailment is something I really look forward to being unravel.