How Migraines Inspired My Main Character’s Superpower

I’m curious, have any of you read books where the main character has migraines?

Sometimes I can be really oblivious to elements in my writing. Fairian’s “Episodes” in Jagged Emerald City turns out to be one of those things. Minor spoilers ahead if you haven’t read JEC already!!

I’ve suffered from migraines since I was 11 years old. The all encompassing kind, where spots covered my vision until I could barely see, I threw up for hours, and excruciating pain left me immobile for pretty much the entire day.

Your brain does funky things when that happens; your thoughts wander and mull and there’s something just off about reality around you. I once couldn’t stop staring at my fingers because I felt like they’d swelled to quadruple their size, and every time I closed my eyes that’s all I could feel.

Fun times.

Anyway. The point is, if you haven’t read JEC yet, Fairian goes through something during the dark moon (hey did you know that’s why I published my debut on the first dark moon of this year??) that some might describe as… er… an acid trip. Basically, she becomes a magical cerebro for several minutes, reality smears into incomprehension, and she can Feel the living energies of the entire city around her.

Okay, so I can’t claim that my migraines gave me superpowers to feel people. But that excruciating awareness of everything around me, the seemingly warping of reality… well it wasn’t until about a year ago that I realized “oh duh, I wrote this into my book.”

Thankfully, my migraines have gotten easier and more manageable over the years.

Fairian, however… I don’t have great news for her.

I’m curious to know, have you read anything where the main character experiences migraines or something like it? I can recall one book I’ve read where the character suffered on-page migraines I read about (though I can’t remember the title of course) but it doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of books with it out there!