Caring for a Parent with Migraine

My father, God love him, believes the correct treatment for any migraine is one cold beer and total, monastic silence. He will tell you this with the confidence of a man who has never once read a medical journal, and honestly, I respect the commitment. This book is for every adult child who has watched a parent minimize, deny, or ‘home-remedy’ their way through a migraine that clearly deserved real attention.

We’ll laugh about it, because laughing helps, and then we’ll talk honestly about how to help without taking over, and how to breathe through the frustration that comes with loving someone who won’t quite let you help enough. There is a very particular generational sport of minimizing physical symptoms, and our parents are gold medalists at it. ‘It’s nothing.’ ‘I’ve had worse.’ ‘I don’t want to make a fuss.’ Meanwhile they’re squinting at the television with the curtains drawn at two in the afternoon, but sure, it’s nothing.

Our parents raised us to be tough. Nobody warned us we’d spend our thirties and forties gently prying that toughness out of their hands so they’d actually go to the doctor. This chapter isn’t about winning that fight. It’s about noticing the pattern with a little humor instead of a lot of frustration, which, frankly, is better for your own blood pressure.

Since your parent will not volunteer information, you’ll need to become a gentle, unofficial detective. Not a suspicious one — a loving one, the kind who notices the curtains are drawn on a sunny Tuesday and asks about it without making it a whole interrogation. □ Curtains drawn, TV off, unusual quiet during their normal active hours.

skipped errands, or a suddenly cancelled visit with no clear reason given. or comments about lights or sounds being ‘too much’ today. □ A pattern, once you start tracking it, that clusters around certain days, weather, or stress. Offering to come to an appointment is an act of love.

Taking over the appointment is an act that will get you gently, or not so gently, uninvited from the next one. There’s a real art to being useful in that room without becoming the main character. How to be useful in the room Ask your parent beforehand what they want you to help with — notes, questions, just company — rather than assuming.

Let them answer questions directed at them, even slowly, before jumping in. Save your own questions for a natural pause, phrased as ‘may I add something?’ rather than taking the floor. Afterward, debrief together rather than deciding for them what the appointment meant.

A pattern I’ve noticed in my parent’s symptoms that I haven’t brought up yet… One gentle question I could ask this week, instead of an assumption I’ve been quietly making… Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your parent is an adult, and gets to make choices you disagree with, including the choice to underplay their own migraine.

Respecting that autonomy while still advocating for their health is one of the hardest balancing acts of adult caregiving, and nobody hands you a manual for it. Except, apparently, me, right now. The balance usually looks like this: share your concern clearly, once, without nagging on a loop.

Offer specific help rather than vague worry. Then let them decide, and let yourself off the hook for outcomes that were never fully yours to control. Some of the hardest moments in caregiving happen in the car, alone, right after leaving your parent’s house, when all the worry you held back in front of them finally has room to surface.

Here’s what I do before I pull out of the driveway. Put the car in park. Just for two minutes, before you drive. Breathe in: ‘I love them.’ Breathe out: ‘I cannot fix everything today.’ Repeat six times. Then drive home, ideally without also crying at a red light, though no judgment if you do.

I use humor a lot in these pages, and I want to be clear about why: not to avoid the hard feelings, but to survive them long enough to keep showing up tomorrow. A well-timed joke with your dad about his ‘beer and silence’ treatment plan isn’t minimizing his migraine. It’s connection, and connection is half of what good caregiving actually is.

Laughing with your parent about the absurdity of aging bodies doesn’t mean you’re not taking it seriously. It usually means you’re taking each other seriously enough to still have fun. Loving a parent who minimizes their own pain is exhausting and tender in equal measure.

You are allowed to be frustrated with them and devoted to them in the very same afternoon. Keep noticing gently. Keep offering specifically. Keep breathing in that driveway. And keep the beer-and-silence jokes coming — they’re doing more good than you think. Next in the series: Migraine Medications and Older Adults — the questions worth asking about drug interactions, without needing a pharmacy degree to ask them.

doing the math that never quite adds up: two kids, one aging father, one migraine of his own, and exactly one body to run it all with. He writes the way he learned to cope — with humor first, a meditation cushion close behind, and the firm belief that you can laugh about the absurdity of caregiving while still taking it, and yourself, seriously. He is not a doctor, and says so proudly and often.

What he is: someone who has sat in enough waiting rooms, driven enough late-night pharmacy runs, and breathed through enough of his own bad days to know that healing has room for both meditation and a decent joke. He hopes these books leave you a little calmer, a little lighter, and a lot less alone.