Migraines have been a part of my life for a long time. Both my parents had them. My mom suffered from hormonal migraines, while my dad was afflicted by crippling migraines triggered by red wine, cheese, and stress. Watching the two people closest to me suffer all through my childhood and adolescence had the unfortunate effect of instilling in me a degree of fatalism when it came to migraines. I came to believe that migraines were just something I had to live with. They were in my genes, they were in my fate, and there was nothing I could do about them. This was the frame of mind I was in when I started having migraines of my own, as an adult. My stressful and hectic job as a nurse was definitely a major contributing factor. For a while, they were tolerable enough. I thought I was patient and resilient enough to manage the pain. But eventually, I realized that I wasn’t. That turning point came shortly after I delivered my second child. The joy of giving birth to my beautiful boy was almost overshadowed by the crippling pain of my migraine attacks, which became more intense and more excruciating than I ever could have imagined.

I have often had moments of despair when I have questioned the existence of humanity and goodness in the world. Having a congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension right from when I was born has certainly not made my life easy. It gave me a gloomy outlook on everything. The silver lining to this chronic medical condition was my job. I loved my job and often told friends “I was born to do this!” They would chuckle but know in their hearts that it was true. I worked hard to not stress and work out regularly to keep my pulmonary hypertension in check. And this worked just fine for me until the age of 27. When a chronic cough progressed to breathlessness to sleeplessness to the inability to walk, I had to write to my boss with a heavy heart to inform him that I would be off for a few weeks. Those few weeks turned into a month and eventually into a year. A lot changed in my life during that year off from work. A few hospital visits, a few hospital admissions, a few scares and finally the doctor uttering those 20 words which rattled my world – “You will need a double heart/lung transplant and we need to put you on the organ waiting list right away.

I had always been a healthy child. I hovered between being overweight and borderline obesity but never let it weight too much on my mind. Food was happiness to me and I genuinely enjoyed my mother’s home cooked meals and the desserts and fast food options around me. All this changed when I entered college. Being amidst new people and staying away from home was a new experience for me. That was also when I first started comparing myself to the other thinner girls around. My first year of college was a period of anxiety, self-doubt, and depression, and I struggled with making friends, let alone finding dates. I used to be alone most of the times, working on projects or reading books. The anxiety and depression only made me rely more on food, and this has a tumbling effect. I started putting on weight like never before. A regular random blood test revealed that I was borderline diabetic. That was the day I woke up and realized that things were really wrong. I should not be worried about diabetes in my early 20s. I called my parents and cried over the phone, took a few days off and went back home.