Category: Blog

8. Alternative Practitioners 1

8. Alternative Practitioners 1

‘Your migraines will go if you are ready to let them go!’ Alternative speak for it’s your fault. Anyone with a condition probably thinks there must be a person or therapy waiting to change her life. The reason: we know the world would prefer we read more

7.  Medical Tourism 2

7. Medical Tourism 2

When I was in unbearable pain, I sometimes asked my GP for morphine. He always refused. Then I read about a woman in Glasgow who died an hour after being given a morphine injection; she had been given 20 times the dose. That cured me. read more

6. PFO: Migraine and the Heart  

6. PFO: Migraine and the Heart  

What causes migraines remains poorly understood. (Not my words.) But in some cases, the headache symptoms have been linked to a common hole in the heart called a patent foramen ovale, or PFO. Since 2000, some medical reports have indicated that repairing the hole for read more

5. Medical Tourism 1

5. Medical Tourism 1

Migraines do not readily respond to one medication and, even when they do, this can randomly stop, which is why the search continues. I first heard about occlusal splints from a nurse who had worked for a Professor of Oral Medicine at the Royal Victoria read more

4. Chasing Cures 2:  Prophylactics

4. Chasing Cures 2: Prophylactics

Prophylactics or daily preventatives are where we wander into medication for other conditions on a just- in-case or you-never-know-it-might-work basis. And you can be lucky. The most commonly used are beta blockers: propranolol, metoprolol and timolol, more normally used to treat angina and lower blood read more

3. Chasing Cures 1

3. Chasing Cures 1

Some people chase storms, some rainbows, hopes and dreams, but anyone with a condition chases explanations, relief and cures. Presenting as a possible migraine sufferer means a serious symptom exam. Not every headache is a migraine. My London doctor was thorough, as indeed all doctors read more

2. The venue must be trashed

2. The venue must be trashed

I enter my other world where pain – a brutal sun – rises so slowly I hardly know its pointless orbit has begun Then – too late – it floods my landscape. Higher, harsher more violent rays find my soul and all dreams die I read more

1. I appear to be normal

1. I appear to be normal

In the league table of conditions migraine is low. It’s down there with depression,  fibromyalgia, ME etc. Novelists use it to explain female absences or backsliding: ‘She has one of her migraines,’ as though she could have anyone else’s. I hate them for it. When read more

In Search of St Moluag

In Search of St Moluag

Of all the Irish missionaries who crossed the sea in coracles to bring Christianity to these islands, St Moluag is one of the least known and venerated. Yet, it was not always so. If reports are to be believed, he had a busy life travelling read more

Sailing with stowaways

Sailing with stowaways

I experienced the following while travelling with my partner, Captain S M Ross, whose ship MV Snow Delta was carrying fruit from South Africa to Europe, fruit many readers will be used to eating, without knowing its back story or one of them. When they dragged him out read more

The Future of Lismore church

The Future of Lismore church

The building we now know as Lismore Parish Church was once the Cathedral Church of St Moluag. It was built by the MacDougalls sometime in the 13th century, although evidence of exact dates is not easy to find. It was dedicated to St Moluag who read more

The Captain’s Missus—or—Why I Trailed

The Captain’s Missus—or—Why I Trailed

The following describes my experience of travelling with my partner, Captain S M Ross, whose job was to carry food and goods worldwide as a member of the British Merchant Navy. Then, in the 1990s, Mrs Thatcher encouraged British shipowners to get rid of the expensive British, acquire read more