It was around 2001, while we were living in the Dominican Republic, that I started getting very strong headaches. As time went on they became almost disabling.
I could not work when I had one. I could not even get out of bed, or open the blinds at home by so much as a slit, because the light was unbearable for my eyes. So a point came where the only solution was to run to A&E at the clinic nearest our house, to have some powerful drug injected through a drip. After an hour or two it would take effect, and I could go back to living.
I was diagnosed simply with migraine attacks, for which I had to take medication the moment I felt the pain beginning: once it had started at full strength, the only way to make it go was to get to the clinic and have the medicine put straight into a vein.
Years of it, and a whole packet a month
For years I suffered from these terrible migraines. I depended on the medicine, and I thought it was linked to the high temperatures of the Dominican climate. But when we moved to Italy I still ended up in hospital, because there was no drug among the common ones that relieved the pain.
In hospital they finally found the medicine that worked in my case, but it meant that at least once a month I had to take an entire packet to be well, with devastating side effects on my gut.
January 2014
Until, after 13 years of suffering, one January morning in 2014 I woke up again with a bad migraine and asked my third son, who was 9 at the time, to lay his hands on my head and pray for me.
He did exactly that. He drove the pain away in the name of Jesus, and it went in an instant. It has never come back.
Every Monday, 6.30am
We pray for this city, and for each other, at the start of every week. You never have to pray out loud, and you are welcome even if you are only curious.