From Chronic Migraine Pain to Regaining Control and Energy for Family Life

Now that I'm through the program and I continue to practice the things that I have learned from her, life is very different now. I no longer have that constant state of feeling like a migraine's coming. I don't always have to avoid plans, assuming my migraine is going to start. That was the hard part, was making plans with friends. Sure, I can do it a week or a month in advance. That would be the day I'd get a migraine. I feel like I have control of my life now. I'm happy, I have energy. My family and I get to do activities together now, rather than them doing on their own and me staying at home dealing with the migraine. My husband notices that I have energy. I participate in, you know, working out in the yard, taking walks, doing things that we enjoy doing. I feel like life is so much better. Im not living it alone in my room. I feel like I'm healthier and happier. Hi, I'm Dee Ann Blackwell I am from Nashville, Tennessee. I am a licensed physical therapist. Some of the main symptoms I were having, varied throughout my life. In my mid-20's, it was an incredible amount of pain to where I just wanted to lay in a dark, quiet room, not move, not talk to anybody, not hear anything. In my 30's, they became more vestibular migraines to the point I didn't know I was having a migraine. I was diagnosed with all kinds of vestibular problems. Diagnosis and all the medications and the treatment for those didn't work. In my mid-50s, my symptoms were extreme fatigue to the point where when I was driving home from work, I was doing everything I could do to stay awake. I had nausea. My pain was mild to moderate. But the main thing was I just didn't want to do anything. I just didn't have energy anymore. What made me choose the Migraine Relief Code is, I had seen Dr. Barrett on Instagram, and I listened to her story, and I realized that she had a lot of passion for teaching and helping people with their migraines. As I continued to listen to her story, I thought, 'wow, who would be more motivated to go and research her program and establish her program than a woman who'd suffered migraines herself?' I knew that she had lived it and felt all the agony that I had felt - the desperation that I felt over the years, just seeking some help. I got to the point where I was pretty much just giving up. I'd been to so many doctors, I'd had so many different types of medications, and I thought, 'this is just my life. I'm now a chronic pain patient.' But the more I heard her story and listened to her, I thought, why not give this a try? She's a neurologist who's a physician as well as a functional medicine physician. I felt like she would be 1 doctor that wouldn't just throw another medicine at me and say, "here, take this," and hope it sticks. Her program has ways to teach me how to evaluate my symptoms and how to treat them. She taught me how to realize how so much parts of life is tied to my DNA. Why I respond the way I do to stress and to environments, to foods to relationships, to jobs - and all that just is intertwined with each other. They're all linked. And when I learned how each component was so critical and how I could treat and manage those symptoms, that's when I started to get relief. I was really very excited. I was scared because it was going to take a lot of commitment from both myself and my family. There were some financial concerns as well. What surprised me the most was how much information she had to share. There were 12 weeks of every week having a different assignment to where she would present, "Here's a possible cause for migraine, this is how to evaluate it, this is how to treat it." I took each bit of information that she had given me and tried to make those changes in my life. Then there was one day I was on the call, It was a zoom call. And I'd see people's faces and I saw their faces and I thought, "oh my gosh, that used to be me." It was one of the few times I spoke up and I said, "you guys, I know where you are. I've been there. I felt it. I lived it. I was fearful. I hear other people who've been in the program longer talk positive and I thought, I'm not sure that will ever be me." And after that call, I hung up and I thought, "Wow, I've made it.