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Published June 26, 2026

My Journey Through a Migraine

Millions of people get migraines. Here's what mine feel like.
The cover shows Ellika lying in bed, barely visible beneath a duvet, with towels and headbands wrapped around her head. Above her the title “Migraine” is written in spiky white lettering against a black background.The text reads, “The first thing you need to know about migraine is this: everyone’s experiences are different. There is no one list of symptoms that defines it, and there is no singular cure. This is an account of how I experience migraine, at its worst. I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience. If you are a sufferer, reading this might make you feel ill. Take it easy and come back later if you need to. P.s. I am not a doctor and this comic does not contain medical advice.”The text reads, “I feel it coming before it arrives”. The first panel is in full colour and depicts Ellika sitting at a desk and writing. She is rosy-cheeked and healthy looking. The background is a psychedelic pattern of bright colours and wavy lines. The second panel is almost identical, except everything is black and white and the colours are escaping in squiggly lines across the page, breaking through the boundaries of the panel and the page itself. Ellika is looking directly at the reader.Ellika stands up from the desk and walks in an arc from the top to the bottom of the page in four stages. First, she leaves her desk, then we see her hold a hand to the side of her head. The text reads, “There is no pain yet, but my brain and body begin to respond.” In the next stage her body appears to be physically melting as she continues to hold her head. The text reads, “My movements become sluggish. I turn ashen. I am both too hot and too cold.” In the last stage she has become hunched and formless and has lost most discernible human features except for two eyes and a nose. The text concludes, “I am like a candle melting in the sun.”We see Ellika trapped inside a diamond-shaped cage, clinging onto the bars. Several white ghost-like echoes of her are silhouetted against a black background and fall away from her to the top right and bottom left of the page, fading into the darkness. The text reads, “Time rapidly contracts and the dizzying speed of it feels like motion sickness. The future ceases to exist. The past no longer matters. I don’t have hopes or dreams any more and my plans are a bad joke. I am forced to exist in the now. The migraine becomes my prison.”The whole page shows a side-profile of Ellika’s face with her eyes closed and a tense expression. Overlaying her head is a long dark cord that starts from her neck and twists its way up round the back of her ear and then winds in and over itself across her whole head, ending just above her eye. The text reads: “The pain arrives and all the nerves in my head and my neck twist and gnarl into knotted ropes. Too big to fit into the space, they squeeze outwards making me woozy.”The page is covered in a fuzzy, distorted texture of white noise, irregular shapes and twisting lines. The text overlay says, “Sensation of any kind is overwhelming. Lights are too bright, sounds are too loud, pleasant smells curdle and being touched makes me want to lash out like scared cat.”An oblong popcorn bucket lies on its side, spilling its contents across the centre of the page. There are some larger pieces at the bottom and top of the page. The text says, “Eating helps in the early stages. The dopamine hit inhibits the pain and allows me time to prepare for the descent. I can cancel plans, hand over my workload, buy the medication I need. I am also aware that I won’t be able to eat a thing tomorrow, so I should probably get the calories while I can.”There are eight small panels on this page with captions underneath. A caption at the top of the page reads, “I avoid telling people when I’m having a migraine. They can’t do anything to help, but will often try to give advice anyway. I have tried everything already, trust me. Things people have suggested:” Panel 1 is a plain black box. The text reads “lie in a dark room (no shit)”. Panel 2 shows a cold takeaway drink with straw. The text reads, “induce brain freeze”. Panel 3 show Ellika lying face down on a bed with needles in her back. The text reads, “acupuncture”. Panel 4 is a close up of Ellika lying down with a small towel across her forehead. The text reads, “cold compress”. Panel 5 is a bird’s eye view of a pair of feet in a tub of water. The text reads, “feet in hot water”. Panel 6 shows a bottle of tabasco. The text says, “a spoonful of tabasco”. Panel 7 shows Ellika massaging her face with a heart-shaped tool. The captions reads, “gua sha”. Panel 8 shows Ellika with a towel draped across her head with an upside down jar of water balanced on top. The text reads, “whatever this is”.Thorny vines are growing across the pages from right-hand side. The background is black. The text reads, “Day 2”.The thorny vines from the previous page have overlapped from this page and are growing from Ellika’s head. Her head is bowed, her eyes are shut, she is a sickly grey colour and the folds of her brain are visible through the tangle of vines. The text reads, “Some people are able to sleep off a migraine, and I envy them! Instead, I wake up to find that the throbbing knot in my temple has grown thorns and they press into the soft folds of my brain.”A reflection of page 4 where we see Ellika’s condition worsen in stages as she moves across the page. This time the page is darker as Ellika rises from her bed, not opening her eyes, and turns her back to us as she reaches for and then crouches over the toilet. The text reads, “For the next 24 hours I lurch back and forth from my bed to the toilet bowl, vomiting bitter yellow bile. ‘Vile bile vile bile’ I chant in my head, as I crouch over the loo, retching so hard I feel like I might turn inside out.”This page is so dark that the illustration is barely visible. Ellika is sitting under the shower naked holding her knees to her chest with her eyes shut and a miserable expression on her face. The text reads, “Every time I vomit the thorns stab harder, so I crawl into the bathtub and turn on the shower. I sit in the dark under the scalding water for as long as I can. It’s a potent analgesic, but after a while my head feels heavy with the urgent need to sleep and somewhere beneath the fog, I am ashamed to be wasting water.”Ellika is sitting on the edge of a rumpled bed with her head in her hands. She is naked with a towel wrapped around her head, her face obscured by her arm. The text reads, “As I stand to get out of the shower the pressure change in my head causes the pain to bloom again. I feel as fragile as porcelain doll. I return to bed damp and naked. Clothes feel oppressive but I wrap my head in layers of headbands and hair towels because the pressure feels nice.”The image is the same as the cover. The text reads, “To ease the nausea I lie down on a tower of pillows topped with a hot water bottle. I’ll leave my pit with an angry red face but there is something about the scalding heat that eases the pain. It usually fades after a day, but last time I didn’t get away unharmed. I got a blister on my cheek. The scar is still there.”Ellika is sitting on a chair in the centre of the page facing somebody who is silhouetted in the foreground. We can only see the back of their head and their left hand which gestures towards Ellika. She is clasping a bag to herself and looks annoyed. The text reads, “I have of course spoken to doctors about this. I tell them that I get migraines. They tell me to get eye tests, to take supplements, to write a list of my triggers. But never has a doctor recommended any form of pain relief or medication to directly target and oncoming attack. Yes, prevention is important. But if that doesn’t work? Then what?”In the centre of the page are two open medicine packets stacked on top of each other. The writing on them says “Dr. Reddy’s Sumatriptan 50mg. Film-coated tablets. 6 tablets.”. There is an empty blister pack next to them. The text reads, “It was only when my mum, who also suffers with migraines, recommended a medication you can get over the counter that I finally started to manage my experience. It has been completely life changing, and about 90% of attacks disappear completely within two hours.”This page shows the knotted nerves from earlier, but mirrored so they form a symmetrical pattern. The overlaid text reads, “Day 3. I wake up at 4am to vomit, head still pounding, but within a couple of hours the nausea wanes and my recovery begins. My nerves shrink and unfurl, the thorns retract. The spaces they have squeezed into still throb with the memory. They will need a day to heal.”Ellika is floating in a watery, grey pool. Only her toes, left hand and head are visible. There is a burn mark on her face and she is smiling slightly. The text reads, “I am exhausted despite sleeping for most of the previous day and can barely move. My abs are sore from all the retching. I haven’t eaten or drunk anything in about 36 hours so it takes all my willpower to stop myself from gulping down litres of water. My mouth is sooo dry.”Ellika flys diagonally upwards, pushing through the blackness of the page, opening it up like a zipper, to reveal the the colours of the world again. She creates a path of brightly coloured waves around her against a cream background. They are similar to the colourful squiggles on Page 2 but now have outlines and texture to them, giving them a worn quality. Ellika looks rumpled but happy. The text reads, “Time dilates again and I escape my imprisonment, propelled by waves of creative joy and excitement for the future.”The colourful waves have formed an oval vortex and Ellika floats in the middle, eyes shut and hair flying all over the place looking tired but content. The text is curved to follow the shape if the vortex and reads, “Despite my aching body and bone-deep fatigue I am so alert and grateful to be alive”.A crumbling column hangs from the top of the page. It is wrapped with a winding staircase and we see three Ellikas descending. The top one has her back to us and is walking normally. The second Ellika, who is further down, is holding her head and is hunched. The third sits at the bottom of the staircase, head in her hands. Bright orange flames lick at the column from the bottom of the page, a stark contrast to the monochrome of the rest of the page. The text reads, “It sometimes feels like my life revolves around the what-if of migraine. I am so prone to them I have to be okay with the fact that I may have to cancel plans, or not make them at all. I plan my social life and my work life around the potential of a migraine. Will I be sitting in a stuffy room without regular access to fresh air? Will there be food at this event? Will I be able to get a full night’s sleep afterwards? Minor discomfort can quickly mutate into three days in hell.”Ellika is sitting at her desk again, looking like the first time we met her in colour, except now she has the burn mark and her head is resting on her hand. The text reads, “I understand the privilege I have. I don’t have kids to feed or take to school. I have a partner who looks after me, goes to the pharmacy, cleans out my sick bucket. I won’t lose paid work if I take days off. But if my experience is the best case scenario, why is migraine still so misunderstood?”

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