Spin Cycle: What if?

What if I did not begin getting migraines as a child?
Brain bursting pain starting at twelve years of age,
doctors worried that I had a brain tumor,
brain scans back in the day when they stuck needles all over your head,
sleepovers where the slightest twinge of a migraine aura
caused gut clenching anxiety that I would embarrass myself.
Throwing up in my friend’s bathroom,
when I had been invited over to play.

What if I did not suffer with chronic migraine syndrome
through my entire adulthood?
Juggling school and jobs,
staying ahead in case I would lose days to a headache
lying in a room devoid of light and sound
sometimes for days at a time.
Hearing my husband hush the children crying for mama
pulling them away from the door.

What if I had not spent five or six days a month
lying in bed praying for the pain to stop,
sometimes wishing the top of my head would blow off
so the pressure could escape.
What if I added up the time migraines have taken over my life?
Six days a month before Imitrex and Maxalt were invented,
two days a month since the medications,
from age twelve to fifty-one.
That would total about 2,328 days,
6.37 years.
What would I have done with that 6.37 years?
What if?

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