Reviews for A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary

The average rating for A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-12 00:00:00 Styliani Vlachaki I needed this book. I needed to read someone else's story about what I am going through. Migraines are a lonely condition, particularly if you have chronic daily migraine (a.k.a. transformed migraine), which I have had for nearly 6 months. Hearing Dr. Levy's story of how he experienced the symptoms and how it affected his family meant a lot to me at a time when I am experience many of the same physical and emotional pains. My one criticism of Dr. Levy is that he tries really hard to find a positive purpose for migraines. As optimistic as I tend to be about things, I feel his argument for this is quite a stretch. Debilitating pain and nausea that can be triggered by almost anything and everything seems pretty purposeless to me, especially when it feels like nobody else, including others who have experienced migraines, understands. Levy's idea that migraines might inspire creativity is something else that I am struggling with. Perhaps people with episodic migraines can use their time of relief to reflect on the pain or the aura and to create something from it. For me, suffering almost every day, I don't have the energy or the brain power to be creative. I normally have music pouring out of me faster than I can write it down. I have barely written anything but a few scraps of chord progressions since this started. No matter how hard I try, I can't create a melody or a timbre. Most of the time, I don't even want to hear sounds of any kind. I am creatively useless with this condition. I appreciate Dr. Levy's efforts to comfort me. I at least feel slightly less alone because of it, but I do not feel any more accepting of my condition. I want this demon out of me, and I don't think that any book or work of art is ever going to change that.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-08-27 00:00:00 Harry Dickson These are some passages from the book that struck me as being good descriptors, or that I could really relate to, in order of their appearance in the book. One thing I don't have in common with many of the migraneurs he describes, sadly, is the sensation of elation or clarity that apparently follows some peoples' migraines. Mine are just followed by exhaustion and more pain. [My notes in square brackets.:] Any bolding or italicizing is mine. ~ With aura or withou, with pain or without, daily, weekly, monthly, once in a lifetime, the migraine is a simple thing. It is a nerve-storm, as the nineteenth-century physician Edward Liveing called it, as convulsive and as electric as any other storm, nerve cells and blood vessels all shook up (Elvis had migraines, too), because your eyes took in too much light all of a sudden, because of a tall cup of coffee (caffeine stops some migraines but makes others), menstruation, a chocolate bar (maybe), a glass of red wine or a glass of white, cigarette smoke, air travel, that storm front coming down from Denver, the leaves falling off the big oak in your front yard, that extra hour of sleep you got last night, the hour of sleep you lost, too much heat, too little water, too much stress or too little, that other headache, the painkiller you took to stop the last migraine, the last migraine itself, your Eastern European grandmother's errant genes, nothing at all. (p10) [This really is the frustration of migraines - there are so many things that can set them off, and so many of those things are unavoidable. It's like an unwinable game whose rules you don't fully understand or know.:] ~Soon there was just this little extra madness in the air, just a flirt of something. Early, still August, and the left side of my vision clouded over like a snowstorm, more blurring than blocked, and irritating - I can't explain it, but it really angered me, so bad I almost wanted to punch myself. I was slowing down, too, missing my cues. Standing in the center aisle of a pharmacy, blinking into its lights, forgetting what I wanted or even how I got there. (p65-66) [My brain slows down about the same time I get the aura, and it becomes very difficult to piece words together. At this point, I start talking more slowly, hesitantly, another clue for those in the know.:] ~ And even worse, Siobhan [his wife:] half an hour late, an hour late, and all I wanted was relief. I resented the lateness, as slight as it was, I hated the guilt about how I was treating Aedan [their son:], but none of it compared to the desire for relief, the absolute carnal, primal desire to dive into a dark, silent bed. (p73) ~ Nine centuries ago, the Abbess of Bingen, Hildegard, described her spiritual visions, and twentieth-century observers have been struck by their resemblance to common migraine auras: "I saw a great star, splendid and beautiful ... and with that star came a multitude of shining sparks, which followed the star toward the south ... they were all extinguished and were changed into black cinders ... precipitated into the abyss and vanished from my sight." (p84) ~ Inside, a low pain lies over my right eye like a thin cumulus cloud at sunset, tilted slightly. Not too bad, but a sad inevitability. (p171) ~ It's not that the migraneur looks blind, stares vacantly, for instance, or is unable to focus, but that the eyes seem to be engaged in some other activity not visible to the nonmigraineurs in the room. The migraineur is staring at something not visible, or looking around something that is not visible, or wincing at light which, to everyone else, seems normal, or even subdued. The first symptoms, of course, describe someone experiencing aura; the last, someone with light-hatred,the sun-pain. (p180). [I'm sure I get this look. Most people who know me are able to tell when my head is getting bad just by looking at my face, which goes pale with dark circles under the eyes. I also squint a lot, and duck my head to avoid the lights. Sun-glare is anathema.:] ~ Some migraineurs know what to do. The wife of a friend who excuses herself in the middle of parties, her departures as whispery as the leave-takings of Poe heroines (p181) ~ Elizabeth Loder, for instance, has proposed that migraines make sense if we look at them from an evolutionary perspective ... Migraines compel you to eat better and to sleep regularly. They compel you to avoid stress, which can do far worse things than to give you a headache ... And lastly, migraines make their owners "exquisitely responsive to a variety of environmental stimuli," which might be useful if some of those stimuli are toxic, or might trigger worse problems, or might upset the social fabric. (p200-201)