Two hours later I awake. The small cloud is bigger now, the tip of it touching the sun. I instinctively know I have missed my window of opportunity to dispel it, but I shake two tablets from the bottle and wash them down with a tall glass of water.

My day begins. I make coffee and breakfast as the cloud grows to cover half the sun. By midday the color has faded to gray and the pressure on my temples is affecting my ability to concentrate and focus. My computer screen is bright and the type begins to blur. I am aware now that the clouds will soon become a storm. It is only a matter of when the storm will hit and how strong it will be.

By the middle of the afternoon, the vise surrounding my head makes it difficult to think and the light is hurting. I close my eyes when I can, but work has become near impossible. Often I can fool people until the day ends. Other times I just give up the fight and succumb to the storm. There is no real hiding from it.

It is a small but welcome relief to shut out the light. An iced cloth covers my head as I close my eyes, but I am not foolish enough to hope for sleep to come. Who can sleep with needles in their eyes and a crushing grip of steel around their temples?

All through the night this continues. The red hot barbed wire wrapped tightly around the brain. The ever–tightening grip around the skull. Screws in the temples. The pain won’t ease until at least the small hours of the morning. If I am lucky it will just be the headache, but so often the nausea takes over and neither liquid or solid will stay within my system. Even the bile in my liver is unwelcome, leaving a foul taste in my mouth on its way to its new porcelain home.

I have tried using pressure points to alleviate the pain and sometimes this produces brief moments of relief, but the only true palliative is to not miss those first small warning signs in the first place. If the signs are missed, or ignored, nothing can stop the Brain-Storm from wiping out a day of my life.

The pain can be so great that when the morning comes and the pain has left, I sometimes feel absolute elation. The relief from the pressure inside my skull often brings a smile to my face. Those who never experience “migraines” cannot imagine how totally debilitating and soul-killing a “headache” can be. They cannot imagine feeling a special giddy exuberance from the normal absence of such an intense pain.

Until there is a cure, I will remain one of those who must be ever–vigilant upon waking each morning, fearing the visitation of that first slight pressure at the back of my head—the one that that may portend the mind–thief returning to rob me of another day’s fully productive thoughtfulness.