I’m in MI. And yes, I have a marijuana card. However, for me, marijuana only works as a preventative, not an abortive. It actually usually makes a migraine feel muuuch worse. When I first started being a patient at Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute, I almost got kicked out because I was still using marijuana. They have a strict policy of adherence that includes blood testing for illicit drugs. The idea behind such policies is that the therapy they provide will not be effective unless these substances are not used. It was only because I convinced them that the marijuana was not just not a detrimental substance (if used correctly) but actually was quite a help.
I seriously cannot imagine what it would be like to suffer this way. My regards.
Ambi - I forgot to come back and remind you to tell your neuro about what happened. They should know if you’re having more severe headaches, have to go to the ER, etc.
It sounds like you should ask about a compazine or phenergan prescription to keep at home and use with benadryl if you have another bad run.
Also ask for a trial of Frova and Naratriptan (Frova is better IMO, but Nara is another option). There actually maybe 50, 60 or more of other triptans if those don’t work, so they can find you that works for you.
Discuss something else to replace Topamax potentially. There are a lot of this class of med out there. If you are having significantly more headaches, it’s worth continuing to look at your options. You might also revisit the Topamax decision. If it worked better for you, you could discuss the kidney stone angle with the docs and find out how much it really increases your risk. There may be other ways to manage your risk there.
A few other things to try, if you haven’t, and you’re having several headaches a month:
-Botox
-Cefaly device
-eNeura TMA device
I hope you’re still feeling better. Yes, this is what I think about at 2 am instead of sleeping. :rolleyes:
Not to be a Cassandra, but have you seen a neurologist lately? This is on my radar at the moment.
I have an acquaintance who has a history of migraine. In the last week or two they had the worst one of their life and it wasn’t going away. Diagnosed with glioblastoma yesterday. Surgery today. Life expectancy… not optimistic.
I see my neurologist at the headache institute every 3 months, on the dot. I can reschedule to see him sooner but it would still be at least a week away. I can’t just come in. This place, in Ann Arbor, MI, has patients from all over the country, as far away as southern FL. It’s in demand.
Thanks again. I do plan on asking my doc about a trial of Frova. Thanks for all your help.
Glad to hear you’re being monitored.
That eNeura device is a transcranial magnetic stimulation device (and autocorrect can bite me). Just noticed it was wrong in my earlier post.
Whoa. I had TMS done several years ago in an attempt to treat depression, but it was a go into the clinic, sit down, get a giant techno helmet strapped to your head kinda deal. It took an hour a day for three months. I had no idea there was a wearable device.
(I did not find it effective for depression in the long term, FWIW.)
I used it for several months. Hold it up to the back of my head, hit the “go” button, loud thunk as the magnet does its thing. Kinda weird, but no help. I always thought that if I ever got my headaches managed it might help, but I’m coming up on 5 years unmanaged, so… Maybe someday I’ll have a chance to find out. I gather that they do help some people.
The Cefaly device I mentioned is a stims-type device that you wear on the forehead. Another one that helps some people.
My neurologist put me on topamax (Topiramate). 25 mg to treat my migraines. Prior to my doctor’s visit (starting about a year ago), they went from very infrequent, to VERY frequent suddenly, and they weren’t helping my sudden anxiety attacks either.
So far so good, but it’s only been a couple of weeks. However, a month ago I would have had at least two mild and one bad migraine in that time span.
I figured out what causes my migraines and I stop them before they get out of control. Mine start from a tension headache triggered from a sinus headache. I can tell when the migraine is coming on and I have 15 minutes to fix it. I take sudafed, ibuprofen washed down with hot tea (for the caffeine). I use nose spray and then use a steam vaporizer with a towel over my head to concentrate it. If it gets out of control I use an ice cube and run it all over my head to stop the tension headache. Sometimes one thing works better than the other but the combination works every time.
It took years to figure this out and some of it was by accident. It’s all about finding out what works for you. I took the attitude that migraines have a trigger, and a cure and it was a matter of time before I figured both them out. The last one I had was 16 years ago.
A video of somebody who tried botox injections to treat her migraines: I Tried Botox For Migraines - YouTube (In case you’re wondering, Becky Harris has a medical condition that caused her to lose her hair.)
I’ve heard extremely mixed anecdotes re Botox. Just like so many other things, for some it is truly a blessing and for others it is yet another mediocre option. Definitely not the panacea it is touted as.
I don’t get throbbing pain, I get just intense pressure pain – usually only on the left side – that alternates with nausea. The headache pain will begin to subside, then the nausea will swell up. The nausea fades (or I throw up), and the headache pain roars back. Rinse and repeat.
Imitrex works if I catch it in time, but I don’t want to “waste” any if it’s not a really bad migraine, because I can only get 9 pills in six months. Thank god, I’m retired, and the lessening of stress (well, if I avoid binge watching political shows) has made them less frequent. And I can just crash in the dark with an icepack. Yeah, those days of knowing I have to get in the car NOW to drive the 40 miles home from work if I don’t want to throw up in my lap on the freeway? Don’t miss 'em.
I think I mentioned this on another migraine thread a while ago and didn’t see any responses. I get a weird side effect with Imitrex that I didn’t get with other medications. When I eat something after taking Imitrex my salivary glands have an intense reaction. Like I’ve just eaten the sourest pickle ever. Does anyone else get that?
Imagine if your mind was a hand, and there is a terrible pain in the centre of your hand, and you KNOW, somehow, that if you could grab the pain and just hold it, just hold it tight, in your hand, it would feel better and offer relief. But you can’t. The edges are really sharp, and whenever you try, it hurts more, so you can’t hold it. But it hurts so much and if you could just hold it tight, it would feel better. And then you can’t think of anything else but the pain. It hurts so much, and finally all you can do is give in to it and just be defeated.
Then it “pops” and starts going away. You hope.
For me, the worst ones feel like knives are stabbing down thru the top of my head, a couple of inches back from the top of my forehead. After coming down thru my head, the stabbing pain reaches the area right behind my eyes. It literally feels like my eyeballs are being deeply stabbed from behind. The pain seems to travel back a couple inches from my eyes, at about the same path that the original feeling of knives thru the top of my head originated. The pain is both sharp and stabbing and throbbing and dull. I believe this combination of pain sensations is what leads to my nausea, which becomes all consuming and debilitating and is really the most awful part of a migraine experience. In some hard-to-describe way, the head pain and the nausea meld to form this sort of all-body sickness that makes anything but curling up with ice in a dark room fucking impossible.
I get ‘midrin’ compounded for me. May not be the original, but it works just fine.
I used to take frova, worked great but now my attacks have stepped down from one every few weeks to one every couple months I shifted back to mock midrin because it works best at the begining of the aura phase while the frova either worked or it didn’t - and sometimes it was a crapshoot. I have never had the mock midrin not work to knock the migraine out at the aura phase.
Was midrin that stuff that came in reddish pill form? I remember that stuff. Useless (for me), like so much else.
My moderately bad ones feel like someone has taken a railroad spike and driven it through my eye. It extends straight back through my head. Call that a Level 7 or 8. When they get worse I feel like a bear trap is closing on my head, or my head is being crushed.