🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
It was a hot, sticky summer afternoon in Los Angeles, and I was walking from the front door to our mailbox when a wave of vertigo washed over me, surprising me with its brute force. I stopped mid-stride, as the vertigo's spin made me weak—like my legs were made of Playdough. I sank onto the lawn, laying my head back and closing my eyes.
But instead of what would have been welcomed darkness, I saw a lightshow; squiggly lines and silvery stars bounced around and against each other, multiplying until I couldn't see for the brightness. I felt nausea rising inside me, a piercing stab in my forehead. Suddenly, something sharp and heavy smashed up against the back of my head. It hit me so hard I thought my occipital lobe might be punctured. It was almost a relief when I vomited.
This was not my first migraine. For the past few months, I had been trapped in a prison of pain. Every morning was like the movie Groundhog Day. I would wake up, bleary-eyed, to find the same agony descending upon me.
Migraines affect more than 1 in 7 people worldwide. While 39 million Americans report suffering from these headaches, a quarter of those endure chronic migraines, like mine. I was never out of pain.
I had more than 15 migraine attacks each month, as well as a daily dull, squeezing headache. So, I was never without some kind of head pain, even between the attacks.
And it's not just the pain; the condition stole big chunks of the life I had created with my husband and two young children. Before chronic migraine, I had been an active, engaged mother, on the floor with the Legos and outside playing tag and hopscotch. I baked with my kids, and regularly hosted playdates for them. All of these things were challenging for me, and often plain impossible, with my migraines. I felt I was living a shadow of a life.
It didn't help when I read online that those who develop chronic headaches are at risk of having them for the rest of their lives. This was my biggest fear, which I squashed down, choosing to believe that one day I would trade in my dark, shadow existence, and get my life back.
Attempting to cure my migraines
Over the next five years, I educated myself about migraines, learning what a trigger was and which triggers were mine. I radically changed my diet, giving up dairy and wheat and cutting out all triggering foods: coffee, chocolate, cheese, onions, bananas, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, anything aged or fermented, and any kind of wine or spirit.
I also endeavored to keep my sleep cycle consistent and avoid high altitudes, strenuous exercise, swimming pools, and any kind of pain reliever, which were said to cause rebound headaches. I also started taking supplements touted as healing for headaches, like magnesium and feverfew.
I sought medical advice and had several MRIs, all of which showed nothing. I took plenty of medications, prescribed by multiple neurologists, both abortive triptans—including via injection in my thigh, which works faster than a pill—and preventatives, as well as different courses of steroids. I tried some natural therapies that, for me, actually triggered migraines, such as massage, chiropractic, acupuncture and biofeedback.
Discovering a new method to cure migraines
I thought I had tried everything in the last five years, when Tatiana, a mother at my daughter's elementary school, advised me to try leech therapy. This tall, striking woman confided that she routinely used the therapy for cosmetic purposes. I felt my jaw drop. My very limited knowledge of leeches was from historical novels I'd read, where leeches were used in counter-productive ways, harming the patient in question.
But I was nothing if not desperate. That evening, I looked up leeches online, and read that hirudotherapy dated back to 400 B.C. And, while leeches were used for centuries as a treatment for a variety of ailments, the practice had fallen out of favor in the early 17th century.
A few weeks later, Tatiana and I called her practitioner Irina together and made an appointment for the following day. Turns out, Irina lived a few streets over from me, and the treatment room was on the bottom level of her townhouse.
How leech therapy works
The next morning, I arrived promptly, and gladly laid down on the massage table, the focal point of the exam room. Irina disappeared into the adjoining bathroom, coming back with a small bowl of water with flat, brown, slimy worms swimming in it. She explained that the leeches were going to suck all the bad blood out of me, and then my body would make new, clean blood to replace it.
Irina pulled up my sweater and placed five leeches on my torso, in line with important organs, like my liver and kidneys. "There will be little pain," she warned, holding the first leech up in the air, "just when they bite down." She looked over at me to see how I was taking all this.
I waved her away. "Ha! This is nothing," I said. I lay there obediently for about 30 minutes. The slight pain of the leeches commencing their work was akin to what I felt in the hospital when my newborn son learned to latch onto my breast. When Irina came back into the treatment room, she was carrying a box of cling wrap and a bag of Kotex pads. I eyed her suspiciously.
"Time to wrap you up, my darling," she chirped, and proceeded to take each sucking, clinging leech off me. Blood started to flow from all the puncture holes. She swiftly arranged several pads to absorb the spurting blood, then wrapped the cling wrap around me several times, very snugly, to keep the pads in place. I pulled my sweater on and practiced breathing in my post-leech corset. I left Irina armed with more Kotex to change the dressings and instructions to text her pictures of the bloody pads when I changed them.
How treatment changed my life
Upon waking up the next morning, the first thing I noticed was my head and the fact that it was not scratchy or throbbing.
"Mommy, wakey, wakey," my young daughter sang, as she barged gleefully into the bedroom.
"Good morning, sunshine," I answered, and pulled her up for a hug. I smiled at the sheer pleasure of her softness cuddled next to me. It couldn't be, I scolded myself, and braced for the next migraine. Miraculously, it never came.
I would return, again and again, to Irina's treatment room for leech therapy, mentally checking my head ad infinitum, as I anticipated the proverbial other shoe dropping. But the days passed into weeks, and I had not triggered even one migraine. One day, when I asked Irina for my next appointment, she refused, saying I'd lost enough blood and my body needed to rest. I never went back to Irina, but my chronic migraines were cured.
After the leech therapy, I took each of my children out to a special, one-on-one lunch to say, "I am here and I am back. What have you missed most? How can we celebrate?"
I started attending every single game my sporty son played, whether that be flag football, volleyball or soccer. We did more sleepovers and playdates. We went out to dinner more, and started reading books together again. I was more engaged, and happy without the pain.
While I know everyone's experience of migraines is different, and there is no set cure for all, those slimy little worms transformed my life, and now I live in a rainbow of color.
Diana Daniele is a writer and publicist living in California. She is also involved in migraine advocacy work, and has been selected as a patient advocate for "Headache on the Hill" in Washington, D.C., which will take place in February 2023. For more information about her work, visit: dianadanieleauthor.com
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
