I remember standing in my family room. We had a big window seat that consisted of a large ledge where we would drop our backpacks off after school and a big window looking out into our front yard. That’s where I was standing.
It was February of 1995. I remember that because I was holding the February edition of the Ranger Rick Magazine, a nature magazine for kids.
As I was standing there, I remember feeling a small tug behind my eyes. I had never felt this before and I didn’t think much of it, so I continued flipping through the magazine.
But soon, that tug turned into a pull. And before long that pull turned into an unrelenting pain. It genuinely felt as if someone was stabbing the back of my eyeballs.
As a seven-year-old, I was completely unprepared for this. I began to cry and ran to my Mom for help. She gave me some basic over-the-counter medication and sent me to my room to lie down in the dark, but by this point, the increasing pain was a runaway train. There was no stopping it.
About two hours after that first tug, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.
Finally the pain subsided.
This was my first ever migraine headache.
Over the next few years, my parents and I searched for solutions. Most over-the-counter medication had no effect whatsoever and our family doctors suggested that I simply drink more water or stay out of the sun.
As the migraines became more regular, I became attuned to the warning signs. I knew that prolonged sun exposure and dehydration were in fact triggers, so I was constantly aware of how much water I was drinking and how much time I spent outside in the sun.
At some point, I stumbled upon a migraine specific, over-the-counter pill that worked if I caught it in time. So my Mom bought me a tiny yellow pill container and put a few capsules in it and packed it into the back pouch of my backpack, so I always had access.
“Did you pack the migraine medicine?” she would ask me each time we were about to leave home.
If I happened to not catch the migraine in time, however, there was nothing on earth capable of stopping it. There were only two possible outcomes. The first possibility was that the pain would get so bad that I would throw up.
I remember vomiting in my friend’s front yard during my middle school days and I remember throwing up in the bushes outside of our local pizzeria where my Little League team was having their end-of-the-year pizza party.
The other possibility was that I would somehow fall asleep. As soon as I realized that the pain had crossed the threshold and no medication would work now, I would lie down in a dark room, crank the air conditioning and pray that I would fall asleep. Sometimes I did.
Migraines were simply part of my life. Every few weeks, I would feel that familiar tug behind my eyes and my whole world would come crashing to a stop. Whatever I was doing took a backseat to the immediate need to deal with this looming crisis.
In 2013, however, everything changed.
I was in my first year as a Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was my very first job out of college. I was beyond excited to have such a cool job but also very self-conscious about how unprepared I was for a job like that.
All of my colleagues had dozens of certifications, college degrees and experience, whereas I had a journalism degree. In that first season, I decided that, I may not know much about exercise science, but I can bring great energy every day and do all the little things. Each morning I would rush out to set up the cones for stretch. I didn’t need a college degree for that!
Well, as fate would have it, a few weeks into that job, that all too familiar tug behind my eyes knocked on the door.
I was in a panic!
I knew what this meant!
I knew it would only be a matter of time before I was paralyzed with pain. If I didn’t figure something out in a hurry, I was going to have to go home, crank the air conditioning and pray that it would pass.
Next door to my office was the Diamondbacks medical office. It was a big open room where players would come to get their various injuries treated. It was not uncommon for players to have flu-like symptoms or a headache of their own, so they often had a variety of over-the-counter meds available.
I walked in.
When I opened the door, I remember seeing a bunch of players laid out on training tables getting work done. Right in front of me was one of our veteran Athletic Trainers working on one of the pitchers.
“Hey,” I said as he and I made eye contact, “Do we have anything for a migraine?”
He laughed.
“Yea,” he began, “We have Andrew.”
This annoyed me. I wasn’t in the mood to play games. I was desperate and genuinely concerned that I would leave a bad impression on my bosses because I had to leave early because my head hurt.
Andrew, however, was our medical director and our resident genius. He was known for his “voo-doo” style treatments. It had become routine for a player to come into the training room with some serious pain and walk out feeling like a million bucks a few short minutes later.
Andrew looked up at me, “Give me five minutes and I’ll come see what I can do.”
I was willing to do anything.
Five minutes later, Andrew came strolling into the weight room and asked me to lay down on one of our massage tables. I complied.
He began a battery of tests, exercises and stretches. I had no idea what he was doing. I was just hoping it would work.
At one point, he asked me to close my eyes and he placed his finger on my forehead. He asked me to keep my eyes shut, but follow his finger with my eyes.
This felt ridiculous but I followed instructions.
“Ahhh!” he blurted out, “I got it!”
He said it with confidence.
“Lay on your left side in the fetal position,” he instructed.
I assumed the position and then he asked me to lift my right knee in the air (like a clamshell exercise).
“At some point in the next few moments,” he started, “I’m going to push your right knee down, don’t let me.”
I waited…and waited…and BOOM, he jammed my knee down and I reflexively shot it back up.
“There,” he said, “Stand up and tell me how you feel.”
I was curious.
That might be an understatement.
I had just spent 5-10 minutes going through a bunch of bizarre exercises and he performs a glute activation technique to me and this is supposed to cure my HEADache?
I spun to my feet and slowly began walking.
My skepticism didn’t last long.
Over the next few minutes, like someone turning down the volume, that familiar tug behind my eyes began to fade away.
I want to pause right now to emphasize to you just how profound this moment was. Up to this point, I had suffered for roughly fifteen years with debilitating headaches.
Migraines had been woven into the fabric of who I was. It was just something that was a part of my life and something I would always have to deal with.
And in the snap of a finger. Or in this case, a jam of the knee, suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel.
I was emotional.
“Dude!” I said to him, “What did you just do to me?”
He laughed.
“I’m serious man,” I continued, “You have no idea how big of a deal this is to me. You gotta explain to me what you just did.”
He thought for a moment and replied, “Ahhh, it’s too complicated to explain.”
I could not accept that.
“You HAVE TO tell me what that was,” I pleaded, “Dumb it down, give me SOMETHING!”
He paused, clearly trying to put the pieces together in his head to try and explain it in a way I could understand.
“It’s just too complicated,” he punctuated.
This is where my story begins.
Until this moment, I had been stuck, like everyone else, in the world of conventional medicine. The doctors were the experts and if they didn’t have the answers, no one did.
But on this sunny afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona, I was opened up to the possibility that there may be answers out there that the “experts” don’t know about.
I decided then and there, that I would stop at nothing to find those answers.
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