Painting Pain
Reviewed by Neha Pathak on March 10, 2022
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PRIYA: Things look kind
of blurry and out of focus.
And it feels like it's stabbing
your eye, like piercing
your eye.
Someone stroking my arm
would feel like razor blades.
It's not just a headache.
It can be a two or three day
affair.
And it would knock me out.
[MUSIC PLAYING] The earliest I remember is being about eight or nine. I don't think I quite knew that it was called a migraine. All I knew was that it's a headache, and it's a bad headache. And it always ended up with me being in bed all day, if I ate anything, throwing up. And you say, oh my God, again? Like why? I would get so angry that I would make the migraine worse.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: My mom has made a lot of adjustments. From an early age, I had a pretty strong appreciation of this being a debilitating issue she was dealing with. I remember her making comments about how often she would have to push through the pain. It made me wonder what was so different about her.
PRIYA: My migraines almost always start with a little tingle or a tickle. And then the pain and pressure, it's like a tight squeeze. And I'm thinking words in my head, but they don't come out of my mouth. I cannot spell words. Regular light seems ultra bright. It feels like it's stabbing your eye, like piercing your eye, same with sound. It's like repeated jabs in the brain.
Things start to look diffused and out of focus. And then colors start to flood my mind, looks either like when you drop ink in water how the colors sort of spreads and diffuses. Or it looks kind of like the lava lamp kind of texture, sort of goopy. Even though it's in my head, when I close my eyes, I'm very much inside it, and it's all around me, the colors.
[MUSIC PLAYING] So my migraines are triggered by many factors. I cannot eat cheese, or soy, vinegar, anything with yeast in it. I'm also affected by temperature changes, not sleeping on time, I'm not being hydrated enough. Even the slightest exposure to any of my triggers immediately give me a migraine.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: To understand that she's learned about these things and come to understand these things over time has been really important for me myself, because even in my own life, I've come to understand many of my own triggers.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: I noticed there was something wrong with Nihar right when he was young.
NIHAR: I woke up one morning ready to go to school. There was this overwhelming amount of pain, this overwhelming sensitivity to the light and the sound. I remember calling for my parents. And my mom's face really just sank.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: I felt really guilty, because here I am having passed on this condition to one of my children, and especially somebody that was so full of joy. And you feel helpless, because there's nothing you can do.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: It's this kind of throbbing, pulsatile sensation, which almost at times feels like somebody is using a jackhammer on your head.
[HAMMERING SOUNDS] When I was in seventh and eighth grade, I started to get three to four really, really bad migraines a week.
PRIYA: Three, four days of a week he was in bed, not eating anything, not doing anything. NIHAR: I started to miss a lot of school. In early eighth grade, my parents made the decision to pull me out. I always loved school. I always loved going to school. It made me question why is this happening to me. I've had to learn to deal with the disease over the years, learn to live with it, and often push through the pain even when I don't necessarily want to.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: Six or seven years ago, I experienced a really severe migraine. And this particular migraine was more colorful than anything I'd seen before. And for whatever reason, I decided to go try to capture those colors in paint.
[MUSIC PLAYING] The more I painted, the more colorful and vivid my migraine visions became, much more detail, pops of light, lot of circles I see, very heavy textures sometimes.
NIHAR: My mom has always been an artistic person. The first time that I saw a painting of hers, I was shocked. I was shocked. These immense, colorful, elaborate visions that she would have while she was getting a migraine is just remarkable to me.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: The act of painting calmed me, and sort of quieted my brain in a way.
NIHAR: It was really important for her to find a method of dealing with them, a way for her to almost reflect or introspect about her own pain.
PRIYA: That shift in perspective that you know they're a part of me, I don't need to fight it. Whenever it comes, I need to kind of accept, embrace, and just move on. Because I know that eventually at some point, that pain is going to go away. So that shift in perspective has literally changed my life.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: Her experience was definitely helpful in helping me deal with my own migraines. I'm not as artistically gifted as she is. That gene wasn't passed on. But I've always been a fan of music. And I've always found music to be very soothing for me. And so the piano, for example, is an instrument that I love to sit down at when I'm having a migraine.
[MUSIC PLAYING] Even though it has sound attached to it, and sometimes, I can be sensitive to sound, I often find that if I'm in control of that sound, it can be very soothing.
[MUSIC PLAYING] I think that my experiences with migraines have in many ways, shaped who I am. From a career perspective, that's definitely shaped me as well. It's something that's provoked my interest in fields like medicine and science, where I can devote my life to making other people's lives better. My trajectory is to become a physician who also is a scientist. Be able to take care of people and develop relationships where I understand what's going on in their lives, and I can be involved in taking care of them not just physically, but emotionally, and spiritually, and in all these ways that impact their health.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: I have accepted migraines in my life. I don't get frustrated or angry, and say, oh my God, here it comes again, or feeling sorry for myself. This is part of me. This is what always happens. I don't know how long it will play out and what's going to happen. But it's OK. Whatever happens, happens. This is it. It's there. I'll deal with it. Move on.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING] The earliest I remember is being about eight or nine. I don't think I quite knew that it was called a migraine. All I knew was that it's a headache, and it's a bad headache. And it always ended up with me being in bed all day, if I ate anything, throwing up. And you say, oh my God, again? Like why? I would get so angry that I would make the migraine worse.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: My mom has made a lot of adjustments. From an early age, I had a pretty strong appreciation of this being a debilitating issue she was dealing with. I remember her making comments about how often she would have to push through the pain. It made me wonder what was so different about her.
PRIYA: My migraines almost always start with a little tingle or a tickle. And then the pain and pressure, it's like a tight squeeze. And I'm thinking words in my head, but they don't come out of my mouth. I cannot spell words. Regular light seems ultra bright. It feels like it's stabbing your eye, like piercing your eye, same with sound. It's like repeated jabs in the brain.
Things start to look diffused and out of focus. And then colors start to flood my mind, looks either like when you drop ink in water how the colors sort of spreads and diffuses. Or it looks kind of like the lava lamp kind of texture, sort of goopy. Even though it's in my head, when I close my eyes, I'm very much inside it, and it's all around me, the colors.
[MUSIC PLAYING] So my migraines are triggered by many factors. I cannot eat cheese, or soy, vinegar, anything with yeast in it. I'm also affected by temperature changes, not sleeping on time, I'm not being hydrated enough. Even the slightest exposure to any of my triggers immediately give me a migraine.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: To understand that she's learned about these things and come to understand these things over time has been really important for me myself, because even in my own life, I've come to understand many of my own triggers.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: I noticed there was something wrong with Nihar right when he was young.
NIHAR: I woke up one morning ready to go to school. There was this overwhelming amount of pain, this overwhelming sensitivity to the light and the sound. I remember calling for my parents. And my mom's face really just sank.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: I felt really guilty, because here I am having passed on this condition to one of my children, and especially somebody that was so full of joy. And you feel helpless, because there's nothing you can do.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: It's this kind of throbbing, pulsatile sensation, which almost at times feels like somebody is using a jackhammer on your head.
[HAMMERING SOUNDS] When I was in seventh and eighth grade, I started to get three to four really, really bad migraines a week.
PRIYA: Three, four days of a week he was in bed, not eating anything, not doing anything. NIHAR: I started to miss a lot of school. In early eighth grade, my parents made the decision to pull me out. I always loved school. I always loved going to school. It made me question why is this happening to me. I've had to learn to deal with the disease over the years, learn to live with it, and often push through the pain even when I don't necessarily want to.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: Six or seven years ago, I experienced a really severe migraine. And this particular migraine was more colorful than anything I'd seen before. And for whatever reason, I decided to go try to capture those colors in paint.
[MUSIC PLAYING] The more I painted, the more colorful and vivid my migraine visions became, much more detail, pops of light, lot of circles I see, very heavy textures sometimes.
NIHAR: My mom has always been an artistic person. The first time that I saw a painting of hers, I was shocked. I was shocked. These immense, colorful, elaborate visions that she would have while she was getting a migraine is just remarkable to me.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: The act of painting calmed me, and sort of quieted my brain in a way.
NIHAR: It was really important for her to find a method of dealing with them, a way for her to almost reflect or introspect about her own pain.
PRIYA: That shift in perspective that you know they're a part of me, I don't need to fight it. Whenever it comes, I need to kind of accept, embrace, and just move on. Because I know that eventually at some point, that pain is going to go away. So that shift in perspective has literally changed my life.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NIHAR: Her experience was definitely helpful in helping me deal with my own migraines. I'm not as artistically gifted as she is. That gene wasn't passed on. But I've always been a fan of music. And I've always found music to be very soothing for me. And so the piano, for example, is an instrument that I love to sit down at when I'm having a migraine.
[MUSIC PLAYING] Even though it has sound attached to it, and sometimes, I can be sensitive to sound, I often find that if I'm in control of that sound, it can be very soothing.
[MUSIC PLAYING] I think that my experiences with migraines have in many ways, shaped who I am. From a career perspective, that's definitely shaped me as well. It's something that's provoked my interest in fields like medicine and science, where I can devote my life to making other people's lives better. My trajectory is to become a physician who also is a scientist. Be able to take care of people and develop relationships where I understand what's going on in their lives, and I can be involved in taking care of them not just physically, but emotionally, and spiritually, and in all these ways that impact their health.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PRIYA: I have accepted migraines in my life. I don't get frustrated or angry, and say, oh my God, here it comes again, or feeling sorry for myself. This is part of me. This is what always happens. I don't know how long it will play out and what's going to happen. But it's OK. Whatever happens, happens. This is it. It's there. I'll deal with it. Move on.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
