Page 60 - Summer2018

Wise Traditions Podcast Interviews

INTERVIEW WITH JODI LEDLEY

Hilda Labrada Gore: Jodi Ledley is the author severe ones. You fear you’ve had an aneurysm or
of Adventures with Jodi: How One Girl Stopped something has gone terribly wrong in your head.
Migraines and Chronic Pain and Accidently A lot of times I couldn’t even make it to the ER
Improved Her Family’s Health! Her story is because I was throwing up too hard to get in the
riveting. She saw nineteen doctors and endured car. I remember my husband once taking me in
medical treatment after medical treatment be- the middle of the night and I was throwing up
fore she got to the root cause of her debilitating so hard that I smacked my face on the front of
migraines. Jodi, I understand that you suffered the car. There is no way to understand that type
with migraines for most of your life. Can you of pain unless you have endured it. It is unreal.
tell us that story? When did they begin, and
what was that like? HG: When you got to the ER, what would they
do for you?
Jodi Ledley: I’ve actually had migraines since
puberty. A lot of women have that problem. JL: They have something they call the migraine
They diagnose you as having “menstrual mi- cocktail. Interestingly, the migraine cocktail
Hilda Labrada Gore
is an enthusiastic graines” or “hormonal migraines” or something includes Benadryl and other pain medications.
communicator, health like that. But at some point, something triggered It would just calm me down and stop the vomit-
coach and fitness what I called my “normal” migraines into be- ing, but I still felt terrible for days. It involved
professional. She is coming severe, debilitating migraines. a three-day recovery time. When these became
the producer and debilitating, it was pretty constant. There would
host of the Wise HG: Can you describe the difference to us? be really bad episodes and I would feel unlike
Traditions podcast, myself for days, followed by more really bad
which to date has JL: Any migraine is bad, but sometimes what episodes. Migraines are very closely related to
over one million
downloads, and also people call a “migraine headache” is not really seizures, so you’re just not yourself at all. The
is the Washington, a migraine. A true migraine involves loss of ER visit wasn’t a fix—it was just a little tempo-
DC, co-chapter peripheral vision and vision disruption (which rary pain relief, if that.
leader for WAPF. they call an “aura”); this leads very quickly
She is passionate to severe pain, which in turn quickly leads to HG: You’re reminding me of a woman I know
about wellness on severe vomiting—and maybe after that, lying who’s in college. She has found no relief what-
every level, which on the floor for three days. It is severe. soever from migraines. They pop up unexpect-
is why she is known edly and she is sidelined for days. It seems like
as “holistic Hilda”
(holistichilda.com). HG: For those who have never had a migraine, she hasn’t found any answers. Is that how most
She is a blogger, you could think that the person just has a head- migraine sufferers experience them?
speaker and ache, but when you say debilitating, you’re not
consultant for those kidding around, are you? JL: That is everyone’s problem. There is no help
who want to launch for migraine sufferers. I can say that because
their own podcasts. JL: No, these are emergency room migraines, I saw nineteen doctors and racked up seventy
She lives in and that is only if you can make it there. I’ve thousand dollars’ worth of medical bills trying
Washington, D.C., gone to the emergency room so many times. You to find the cause and some relief. I was getting
with her husband,
children and hear people say that they stuck it out and never to the point where I was going to have to be on
dog and cat. went to the ER—well, maybe they didn’t have disability. It was that bad. One reason I wrote

58 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2018