As most of you may know, besides having fibromyalgia, I have suffered with chronic migraines for most of my life. I have been a virtual guinea pig trying anything and everything to prevent them, and then stop them once they have started. Mostly, it has been an adventure in futility. But recently studies have shown that Botox may work, as a form of prevention. Well at my age, you can imagine I was all over that new discovery. It only took me about a year fighting with the insurance company to approve it. My neurologist had to prove that I have tried all other forms of treatment, and that they were not effective. I really think the final deal came through when they had to start footing the bill for my migraine medicine. It literally costs $33.00 per tablet. The insurance is fine when I am footing the bill, but once I reach my deductible, and they are having to pay, they are all the sudden contacting me wondering why oh why am I having so many migraines? So they finally approved it.
I was ecstatic. I was finally going to take care of my migraines, and look young all in one fell swoop. There are only a handful of neurologists who are actually approved to do this procedure, as I have come to find out. Mine was not very amenable to my directions of where to place the Botox injections. It was rather more painful than I had anticipated. He put them all around my hair-line, as if my hair needs to look any younger. We women have long-held a secret to younger hair called hair-dye (or touching up our roots, as we like to call it). Then he stuck me in the back of the head, where as luck would have it, no one is going to see.
Then down the back of my neck, and all along my shoulders. I was thinking just terrific. They say, you can tell a woman’s age a lot by looking at her neck. I was extremely disappointed that the injections went into the back of my neck, and not the front. I guess I will have to just walk back-wards from now on. And I will have really young-looking shoulders. He did place a few into my fore-head, not exactly where the problem areas were, and there-in lies the problem. I explained to him since I was paying for that vial of Botox anyway, he really should just even things out. I was going to look really smooth in a couple of places, which in turn would emphasize how much faster I was looking like a wrinkled prune in others. He just laughed. Of course, he is a man. He doesn’t understand the intricacies of the female psyche.
All in all, I think I received around 20 injections. After all that, I am just hoping that it works. For those of you who have migraines, you know how debilitating they are. So here’s hoping for the best, and having really young-looking hair! 😉
Written by Kim Carlisle