I get migraines. Bad ones that take me down for at least a day, usually I can feel them coming. The funny thing is people are like oh I get headaches and I just take xyz. Yeah well I take morphine and it still doesn't help so obviously you've not had a migraine.
I was thinking earlier this week while lying in bed suffering from said migraine, that why don't we have more characters with this sort of issue? It can be just as disabling as losing a limb. I know one girl who has such bad chronic migraines she cannot work. Nothing helps, and the docs don't know why it happens. If you lose a limb they can do a prosthetic most of the time. There's nothing you can do when your brain is killing you slowly.
Then this week I picked up a new YA novel, and low and behold the main character has migraines. Not headaches, migraines, nausea, light sensitivity, searing pain that makes it impossible to function. His pain is caused by the fact that he's a witch with crazy powers, and I'm not that cool, but still. It's nice to feel like I'm not the only one in the world for that right?
So I want to ask you guys, why do you think we don't see a lot of these disabilities in fiction? I know there's a stigma around a lot of these things. For mental illnesses it's the worst, things like being bi-polar, depression, anxiety, ocd. And then there's things like migraines, rheumatoid arthritis (which affects not just old people), and probably something else I can't think of at the moment.
I guess a second question would be, do you want to read about people with these sort of issues? We are so accepting of the physical, but what about the stuff we can't see?
No comments:
Post a Comment