Just after the publication of the paperback, my pain became daily, which lasted almost a year. It was the best time in my life professionally, and I felt so lucky for that. I reluctantly canceled the next day’s event but continued doing them through the end of the year.
Once I get home, I’ll be able to rest. Then my migraines escalated to an incredibly intense pain level - a 14-day migraine during a short tour in California landed me in the ER for the first time in my life. My migraines were getting worse and worse, but I just thought, I have to push through. After publication, I did something like 60 events in 14 months. I was given the kind of publicity and touring opportunities I’d dreamed of even before the book actually came out. My new publisher had taken a chance on me, and I desperately wanted the book to do well. My first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, hadn’t found a wide readership or sold many copies. When my second novel, The Immortalists, sold to a publisher at a level that allowed me to leave my day job in social services and write full time - a rare and extraordinary privilege in the arts - I was wildly grateful. By grad school, they were worsening but still manageable.
I started experiencing them in my early teens, though they weren’t frequent then, and I dealt with them begrudgingly but not proactively. I’ve probably had thousands of migraines. Photo-Illustration: by The Cut Photos: Getty Images
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