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A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary

by Andrew Levy

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751360,843 (3.43)5
With more than one in ten Americans--and more than one in five families--affected, the phenomenon of migraine is widely prevalent yet often ignored or misdiagnosed. For Andrew Levy, his migraines were occasional reminders of a persistent illness that he'd wrestled with half his life. Then in 2006 Levy was struck almost daily by a series of debilitating migraines that kept him essentially bedridden for months, imprisoned by pain and nausea that retreated only briefly in gentler afternoon light. When possible, he kept careful track of what triggered an onset and in luminous prose recounts his struggle to live with migraines, his meticulous attempts at calibrating his lifestyle to combat and avoid them, and most tellingly, the personal relationship a migraineur develops--an almost Stockholm syndrome-like attachment--with the indescribable pain, delirium, and hallucinations. Levy researched how personalities and artists throughout history--Alexander Pope, Freud, Virginia Woolf, even Elvis--dealt with their migraines and candidly describes his rehabilitation with the aid of prescription drugs and his eventual reemergence into the world, back to work and writing. An enthralling blend of memoir and provocative analysis, A Brain Wider Than the Sky offers rich insights into an illness whose effects are too often discounted and whose sufferers are too often overlooked… (more)
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» See also 5 mentions

I wanted to like this more, but I found it somewhat tedious. Mr. Levy spends much of the books sharing his studies into the philosophical side of migraines and historical figures who had them. But there isn't much about his experiences with migraine - just little hints and suggestions - and I guess that was the part that was most interesting to me. One point he raised that I find particularly relevant was the impact of migraine on his marriage. For anyone married to someone suffering from a disease that impacts behavior, this is something to think about. ( )
1 vote tjsjohanna | Jul 23, 2009 |
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If a man, with patches on his head, is asked, what is the matter? He will answer, I had a headache the day before yesterday.
Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
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September: There is no line between the migraine and worrying about the migraine as one lies awake at five in the morning.
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With more than one in ten Americans--and more than one in five families--affected, the phenomenon of migraine is widely prevalent yet often ignored or misdiagnosed. For Andrew Levy, his migraines were occasional reminders of a persistent illness that he'd wrestled with half his life. Then in 2006 Levy was struck almost daily by a series of debilitating migraines that kept him essentially bedridden for months, imprisoned by pain and nausea that retreated only briefly in gentler afternoon light. When possible, he kept careful track of what triggered an onset and in luminous prose recounts his struggle to live with migraines, his meticulous attempts at calibrating his lifestyle to combat and avoid them, and most tellingly, the personal relationship a migraineur develops--an almost Stockholm syndrome-like attachment--with the indescribable pain, delirium, and hallucinations. Levy researched how personalities and artists throughout history--Alexander Pope, Freud, Virginia Woolf, even Elvis--dealt with their migraines and candidly describes his rehabilitation with the aid of prescription drugs and his eventual reemergence into the world, back to work and writing. An enthralling blend of memoir and provocative analysis, A Brain Wider Than the Sky offers rich insights into an illness whose effects are too often discounted and whose sufferers are too often overlooked

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