Stars flashed in his eyes. Instantaneous dread. Then someone drove a spike into his head, penetrating the base of his skull. Another pierced his eye.
Pain surged through his skewered head. In another moment, he felt his face muscles stretch like rubber, as if a Herculean fist had snatched his scalp.
Death seemed near.
The attacker, in fact, was a migraine headache. The victim invariably survives. But the agony can last for many hours or even weeks, and migraine medication is a complex crapshoot.
Sadly, those spikes are invisible, because society minimizes brain pain that is all too common. The truth is, serious headaches lead to astronomical financial losses each year in America, aside from the personal anguish.
Migraines are indiscriminate, capricious demons, afflicting even the healthiest people, including basketball Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar throughout his playing career and young NBA star Steve Francis, whose attacks are still confounding doctors.
More than 45 million Americans suffer from headaches and the number is steadily rising, according to the National Headache Foundation. American businesses lose $50 billion per year in absenteeism and payment of medical benefits from headaches. Disability from migraines alone costs $17.2 billion each year, in 157 million workdays lost.
That doesn't account for the countless people who simply work through headache pain, with reduced productivity, says artist Olea Nova.
"Society hasn't viewed headaches as a disability, so often a serious sufferer doesn't admit their problem," she says.
Her interest in the subject was originally prompted by a medical researcher's request for illustrations for a book about headaches.
Nova has developed her depictions into an unusual traveling art exhibit, "Piercing Conflict," which is showing through April 19 at the Wisconsin Department of Administration Building, 102 W. Wilson St. The artwork hangs right outside the offices of the Wisconsin Arts Board, which is the sponsor of the exhibit. Viewing hours are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. (The current lobby exhibits also feature work by ceramicist Babette Wainwright, paintings by Jackie Ritke and etchings and paintings by Richard Yazzie.)
"Piercing Conflict" will travel to the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, where school faculty members will comment on the psychological aspects of the artwork at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. May 17 at a reception.
This ain't your garden variety art show.
"For some people, the images are a little disturbing, but Olea's wall captions really help to explain what she's trying to do," said Shel O'Hare, curator of lobby exhibits at the Wisconsin Arts Board. "I was really impressed with her colors and visual aspects and whole idea of representing migraines in images."
Nova did extensive research with medical specialists and headache sufferers, and grew ever more thankful that she doesn't suffer from migraines.
She notes that there is no cure for migraines, only a myriad of treatments because there are so many different types of migraines, which can last from four to 72 hours. Tension-type headaches can last from 15 days a month to as long as six months.
"It appears to be something happening inside of the brain, a sort of electrical brain storm," Nova says.
Some images depict specific descriptions of her individual interviewees. Other works blend descriptions and her own interpretations of their sensations and moods.
Her mother is a psychologist and her art reflects a strong interest in the human psyche. She sometimes blends almost surreal imagery with droll humor.
"In the Vacuum" depicts a woman walking down a city street with her head enclosed in a large, transparent balloon tied tightly at her neck. Her petite face is stoic in the suffocating seclusion.
"It's the feeling of isolation from the outside world, the desire to be left alone because of pain, fatigue and exhaustion," Nova explains. Other paintings closely delineate physiological phenomena in rigorous anatomical style. In the wrenching image "Migraine in a Split," the person's face and skull muscles are being pulled up out of the skull by disembodied hands that twist the muscles tighter and tighter.
"Meanwhile a spike has penetrated at the base of the skull, driven through the head and into the back of the eye," Nova says, recounting how one sufferer described the migraine sensations. "Light that enters the eye causes additional pain, like another spike in the eye."
Are we having fun yet?
The painting "Buzz" depicts the headache sensation of "sound chaos" - a head surrounded by buzzing bees, engine-gunning cars, a stadium of raucous sports fans, and bells, bells, bells, like the tormented soul in the famous Edgar Allen Poe poem "The Bells."
A seemingly distant blue ocean signifies the man's desire to drown in silent oblivion, Nova says.
Another startling image, "Pill Head," illustrates the bizarre dream of a person dependent on pain pills.
"I had so many pills that I was dreaming that they are growing on my head, like mushrooms, and I was scraping them down," the person told the artist.
Nova admits some of her interview subjects are ambivalent about her art.
"Some people don't want to relive their agony," she says. "Others feel they may gain positive knowledge that they are not alone in suffering."
Copyright 2002 The Capital Times
