self portrait

Back in the day, when I suffered from migraines, this would have been an apt self-portrait.  I was held hostage by  fierce, grinding, ice-pick in the eye headaches for 30 years.  They came every eight days, lasted three days.  I tried every known cure.  I even wrote a novel about it (Hell's Bells).  It was supposed to be funny.

I could not be the person I am today, sitting in a brightly lit studio, were it not for Dr. Stuart Stark.  I had been painting a few years, mostly crippled efforts, until Dr. Stark liberated me.  The cure he proposed, which I think of as the Elvis Presley regimen, won't work for everyone.  I take Ritalin three times a day and a sleeping pill at night.  I have been migraine free for nine years.  I don't ever want to go back to those dark days.http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/cindy-packard-richmond/137919006225893?ref=sgm