By Josh Johnson

LIBERTY LAKE — She’s a high school valedictorian forced to withdraw from college three times. She’s a runner rarely able to set foot outside her Alpine Shores home. She’s an aspiring ER doctor who has averaged monthly emergency hospital trips as a patient.

And she’s a tenacious fighter — her family nicknamed her "The Doberman." She’s a fighter forced to grapple with defeat after defeat as her own unique prerequisite to victory.

It’s been five years since Dana Thompson last experienced a clear head, twice that since the migraines first ambushed life as she knew it. The 26-year-old Liberty Lake resident suffers from intractable migraines. She is one of a small fraction of the migraine-suffering population for which there is no pinpointed "trigger," and therefore no preventative to hold the violent headaches at bay.

Thompson said she has seen specialists the world over. She has spent months in the hospital. Scents, noises, heat — any number of things can trigger brutal reactions sending her to her bedroom for escape or to the bathroom to vomit. She painfully skips family outings and holidays. Her best weeks are spent chiefly in her bedroom, her worst in her bed.

And she has two words for you: "Be strong."

Thompson is the founder and CEO of Liberty Lake-based BeStrong Ministries, a web-based nonprofit "founded to introduce others to Jesus Christ and provide resources for growth and encouragement," according to its website, www.strongwithgod.org. She started the ministry last April, and Thompson said future goals include everything from supporting missions and starting an online lending library to one day opening a facility to meet free basic medical needs.

Despite the fact she has been thrilled with having a hands-on ministry she can work with from her bedroom, Thompson said she has set up the ministry’s bylaws so that BeStrong can exist without her.

"I don’t see BeStrong Ministries as my reason for existence or a way to make myself feel better with migraines," Thompson said. "It’s just kind of the next thing that happened in knowing God."

A 40-acre childhood

Growing up on a 40-acre ranch in Colorado, Thompson made her mom, Karen Thompson, worry she might meet God before her time. As a very young child, Thompson’s favorite pastime was to lie on the ground underneath her favorite animals: the family horses.

"I would lay on my back with my feet by their front feet and my head by their back feet. I would watch their big bellies expand as they breathed." Thompson said. "When Mom first caught me doing this, I am told I was about 2 years old. … She looked out her window and saw me, nearly panicking. She wanted me to get out from under the horse immediately but was afraid of spooking the horse. As soon as I was away from the horse, she set me straight. I should have stayed under the horse. Then she couldn’t yell."

Her times under the horses were practically the only times Thompson could be caught sitting still.

"Dana has three older sisters," Karen Thompson said. "We used to joke when she was little that if she would have been the first one, we wouldn’t have had any more because it took all of us to keep up with her."

Karen Thompson said her daughter used to spend hours running the perimeter of the ranch, jumping rabbit bushes as her ponytail flew through the air. Her parents, including father John Thompson, the head chaplain for the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, admired their daughter’s intensity and strength even as they struggled to keep up with her.

"Of all the girls, we had thought, ‘She’s going to do something big," Karen Thompson said.

‘One big headache’

At age 15, Dana Thompson began getting typical migraines, something her mother is also susceptible to. Little by little, they began to cause her to miss out on recreational events like time with friends and track as well as an increasing amount of school.

"After a while, the headaches would start lasting for a week, or two weeks or a month," Thompson said. "Then the periods of migraines got longer and more intense and (the time between) got shorter. Eventually, it was just one big headache."

Thompson persevered, working with her teachers at Valley Christian High School to make up for missing weeks of school at a time in order to graduate as valedictorian of her class. She pushed through her first year as a pre-med student at Washington State University before having to pull out weeks before the end of the spring semester. She tried again the following fall but had to pull out again after two weeks. After taking a full year off, she attempted college a final time the following fall at Carroll College in Montana but had to withdraw after six weeks.

"I loved school so much (at Carroll that) I was excited to go back to my room and do homework," Thompson said. "When I had to withdraw from Carroll in October 2000, I was pretty miffed."

What followed was a self-described "dark period" of her faith.

"I really thought I was going to fight my way through (the migraines) and grin and bear it and nothing was going to stop me, so when I got knocked back down, I was angry," Thompson said. "I thought I had done everything right, but God betrayed me. If someone said ‘Do you want to be released (from the migraines)?’ I’d be all over it. But on the other side, it’s kind of a paradox. I’ve come to know Jesus in such a different way. … And to know the peace he gives — the joy and the happiness and that calm in your soul — is worth more than any experience of migraines. There’s just a paradox of suffering sometimes."

Thompson counts her mom as her primary care provider and one of her biggest supporters, as well as the person who is most sensitive to what she is going through. Sometimes, people allege that Thompson is "milking" her predicament, something that those closest to her vehemently deny.

"Everyone’s got an answer and all these quick fixes (for the migraines)," Mom Karen Thompson said. "To say I have a tumor on my left knee would somehow be easier to deal with than migraines. It’s like a stigma, and I think that adds to the difficulty of the disability in itself. It’s hard to comprehend. And it’s all in your head. And people can take that so many ways."

Be strong

The epiphany to start a website was ironic in the sense Thompson did not know much about designing or maintaining an online presence. That’s where Liberty Lake’s Idea Rockets Consulting came in. Thompson spotted them in a Liberty Lake Community Directory ad, and soon Idea Rockets President Kristen Maes was on the other end of the line.

Maes, who is a Christian, loved Thompson’s idea and decided to do a lot of work for the ministry for free.

"(Dana) is a super nice and generous person and an inspiration for kind of following your passions," Maes said. "I think it’s easy to sometimes give up and feel sorry for yourself, but I don’t see that in her, which is pretty admirable."

Similar things attracted Traci Crisp-Macy to BeStrong Ministries, where she serves as treasurer on the nonprofit’s board.

"I just truly admire Dana for her strength, and when she is not feeling well, she just keeps going," Crisp-Macy said. "I’m totally behind her in the website and to reach people in chronic pain, and I really think that’s a good thing. But the website is also geared to people who have not met Jesus yet."

In a sense, however, Thompson said everyone has their version of "chronic pain."

"I don’t think I’m an exceptional case or out of the ordinary," Thompson said. "All of us have something that hinders us or discourages us. Maybe not every day, but all of us have something where at some point in our lives we hit something that is bigger than us."

Thompson said the website is her way to reach people in a non-threatening way, where they have the free will to take the information or leave it ("I believe Christ has an abundance to offer everyone, but he also doesn’t like people to be forced into it," she said).

Neither is she threatened by the prospect that she may suffer never-ceasing migraines the rest of her life, not that she doesn’t think about the possibility of having a clear mind again.

"I tend to be non-emotional and very logical, very practical, black and white," Thompson said. "So I have that side of me, but I’m still a dreamer. On a day-to-day basis when I go to bed tonight, I don’t think, ‘Hey, maybe tomorrow would be different.’ But when I think long term, I think maybe someday."

Fast facts about Dana Thompson

Date and place of birth
Nov. 13, 1979, in Salida, Colo.

Family
Father, John; mom, Karen; sisters, Dawn, Ember and Elle; half-brother, Adam

Pet
Bear, "my little therapy dog"

I would like to visit ...
Russia

Favorite author
Mikhail Sholokhov

Favorite movie
Doctor Zhivago

Favorite Bible verse
Philippians 3:10, "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death."

Favorite book of the Bible
1 Peter

My ideal situation
"Practicing medicine in Russia, whether it be an orphanage or a basic medical facility. Or a million dollars with my ranch in Montana. Either one. I’m sure they’re compatible."

BeStrong Ministries website
www.strongwithgod.org