Your healing migraine journey as a woman of color

Three women describe discuss migraines and the difference from a headache and the trouble as a woman of color being heard and diagnosed.

Transcript

00:00

Definitely I fight because I show up with Medicare. And it's like, well, why do you have Medicare? I didn't know I have to go and preface everything

00:08

Medicare, Medicaid. I'm thinking, ask me what I did before this. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:18

Can you tell us the difference between a typical-- what a headache is, right, when you have that nagging sensation, and what is it when you have a migraine that stops

00:27

you in your track, and you actually have to go and seek help? For me, it-- there's no onset anymore.

00:33

Now, there's ju-- it goes straight into extreme pain. You're thinking too hard about something. If you're stressing too hard about something,

00:40

it's flaring up, and it's tightening up. So that's my day-to-day. What has your experience been in dealing with the medical system itself?

00:48

Do you feel like your voice was heard? Or do you feel like you were dismissed along the way? There is a mental component that

00:58

brings about the anxiety, the depression, the stress, which you will see physically, but sometimes you can't see it.

01:04

I had to take a sabbatical from work because it was literally debilitating. Absolutely dismissed along the way.

01:12

And I think that just comes from generations of our culture not being educated and not having the correct guidance

01:19

in doctors. And when I went in in the beginning stages, they just felt like I didn't know what I was experiencing, right?

01:27

So when you started to get-- you start to get vocal, you start to write it down, you start to be more aggressive and proactive

01:33

with your voice being heard. And because of years of consistency, they couldn't say, oh, she's complaining and skips three appointments,

01:41

or she has all these specialists, and she's a no-show. Mental health is physical health. How do we address the psychological stressors

01:49

of society? That has a physical impact. And it does manifest. I think, for people, they need to have a healthy balance.

01:56

You have to just know when enough is enough of something that's not good for you or to you. And you have to have a really strict balance

02:04

and healthy boundaries. I had to release the shame that I felt for having

02:11

this chronic illness. I always felt like I was a burden because we're always at the doctor's office. I carried a lot of baggage.

02:20

And it caused me to have a people-pleasing mindset and overwork and had on my superwoman cape.

02:27

And I can just do everything. And recently, I stopped doing that. My doctor should not only prescribe medicine

02:37

that I can go to Walgreens and get, but tell me about diet. Tell me about physical practice. Like, look at me as a whole person.