Tuesday night I started to get a dull, throbbing pain on the left side of my head. I knew I had a migraine coming, so I went to bed early. I wake up with my left eye blurry, my scalp tingling and burning, and my head throbbing horribly. I go and tell my mom I’m having the worst migraine I’ve had in months, and I don’t think I can go to school. She replys by saying that I can’t just not function, and I better start getting ready for school. I can also start my new nasal spray Migranal. I follow the directions and wait for the “fast acting formula” to work. Within 30 minutes my headache pain was 10 times worse. I was crying it hurt so bad. I pleaded my mom to let me stay home. She makes me go to school.
I suffer through my first period class, but end up going to the nurse. I lay on a cot in the nurse’s office, moaning. The nurse has me go back and to gym, saying the fresh air will do me good. I come back after gym with my migraine slowly getting worse. I have the nurse call my mom. My mom says she won’t come and pick me up, and I should try and go to my classes. I come home from school and lay in my bed, crying and trying to sleep. I wake up this morning with a worse migraine. Again, I ask my mom to stay home. She makes me go. Pretty much the same thing happens today, though I didn’t call my mom at work. I knew what she would say. So here I am right now, in a rare 15 minute break from the intense pain. All I can say is I’m super pissed off. And in major pain.
Fuck your mom. Go to the ER. A 3-day migraine is not normal.
Meh, 3 day migraines are normal for me. My doctor phoned in a new medication for me, so my mom is going to pick it up now. 5th time’s the charm, eh?
People that don’t get those dammed things simply can’t understand. I’ve had 'em, and you’ve got my sympathy.
BTW, you are one of our younger posters, aren’t you? I started having migraines when I was about 12 or 13. My mom’s standard reply was : “Kids your age don’t get headaches. You just dont want to go to school”. It sucks.
There are probably better medications available now then there were way back when. I hope you find one that works for you.
Luckily, as I got older the headaches declined in frequency.
Hope your meds work and you feel better.
This is not a political thread. Please turn in your Pit badge to the security guard on your way out.
Hope you feel better soon.
They really don’t understand. No one in my family has ever had a migraine, so they don’t understand when I’m lying in bed moaning, or when I really can’t go to school. I’m the first one from both my parent’s side to get migraines. It sucks.
Heh. I didn’t make one because I felt it wouldn’t be appropriate. Wayyyyy to much cursing.
I am SO sorry. I’ve gotten a few of what had to be migraines (never diagnosed, they don’t happen often enough to be a real problem) in my life, though none quite that bad, but they flatten me for most of a day when they happen. My first one was when I was twelve or thirteen; fortunately, my mom believed me. I came THIS close to puking in the car on the way home…
Can your doctor pound some sense into your mother’s head? She needs it. Badly. You can’t function with a migraine like that, all you can do is wait it out if the meds don’t work.
I wish I could give you a hug or something, and some magical stuff to make your head feel better.
(I am attempting to send magical stuff to make yor head feel better. In case that doesn’t work, here’s a related anecdote.)
When I was in 8th grade, I was playing baseball with my friends before school started. I was playing second base, and there was a runner coming to second, and the throw came in, and when I reached out to apply the tag, the runner ran hard into my hand and my wrist bent the wrong way. Hard. I dropped to the ground, gritting my teeth, hoping the pain would get bearable in a minute. The bell rang. Everyone immediately ran off, leaving me lying on the ground (nice, huh?). The pain did not get easier to handle. I started to cry. Someone finally noticed me lying there and helped me up and walked me to the nurse’s office. They put some ice on it and called my dad at work. Dad was pissed about being interrupted. I was crying, telling him my wrist was broken, and he was arguing with me, telling me it was just a sprain, suck it up and hang in there. I insisted the pain was too much and I needed to go the the doctor. Reluctant and grumbling resentfully, my father finally agreed to leave work, pick me up at school and take me to the doctor. The doctor gave me some painkillers and took x-rays. My wrist was broken (a hairline fracture). I was smug and my father was humbled slightly (“Just a hairline,” he muttered. “there’s no way you could have known it was broken”). Okay, dad. Whatever gets you through.
Breaking that wrist turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me in Junior High, but that’s a story for another thread.
Feel better soon, O flaming one.
You’ll have to forgive your mother eventually, but in the meantime, make sure she suffers.
I second whiterabbit’s suggestion of having your doctor talk to your mom. It is very difficult for non-migraine-sufferers to understand that yes, the pain really is so bad that you just can’t function. Besides which, trying to function just makes it worse.
– Dragonblink, whose blessedly understanding parents have driven her to the ER more than once
It’s amazing how even the most loving parents will assume that their children are exaggerating pain to get favors or get out of school, etc.
I’ve had my parents doubt me on a few big things–leg pains symptomatic of a heart defect, a broken finger–but thankfully they understand about headaches and are willing to accept my judgements. Being forced to “be functional” when you’re anything but is a terrible thing, and you have my utmost sympathy.
Yeah, I’ve been “fortunate” that migraines run in my family. At least my mom understood that I needed to lie down in a dark room and pray for death. Hope it passes soon, fb.
Learn to throw up all over yourself. Everyone believes you are sick if you approach them dripping vomit.
Even better, puke on a substitute!
Growing up I used to get terrible migrains all the time… not headaches, but so-dizzy-you-can’t-stand-puking-every-10-minutes ones. These usually happened when I got super stressed or super-excited and the entire experience would last upwards of a week or so.
Going to the doctor at the time (late 70’s early 80s) apparently there wasn’t much known about migrains. They told me it was all in my head (psychosymatic?) and to just suck it up. They said the only way I would get better was to go about my daily routine anyway.
So… off I would go to school, so dizzy I could barely walk and trying not to hurl all over the place. It sucked.
When years later I found out what this actually was, and that it WASN’T all in my head, I was relieved and seriously hacked off at the same time 
Responding to the part about your mom, not the migraine: (only cause I’ve never had them, but I did have the other problem)
My mom made me go to school for two days with malaria. See, I seemed perfectly normal, since I was just coming down to it. It’s got a two-week gestation period or so, so I was fine for the previous two weeks. But about fourth period or so, I would start coming down with the fever/chills and I felt like crap.
On the third morning I threw up in the toilet, and yes, she finally believed me. Then I was sick as a dog for two weeks while she worried and her guilt gnawed at her.
Serves her right.
Man, that sucks. I hope your new meds work better. I’ve only had a migraine once, and I never, ever, ever hope to feel that much pain again. It lasted for three days and was so bad I couldn’t turn my head without whimpering. Unfortunately, whimpering = noise, which = extraordinarily increased pain.
I agree with friedo - screw what your mom wants you to do - stay home! And try to take it easy over the weekend.
I understand your physical pain, FlamingBananas.
Have you talked to your doctor about preventative maintence to prevent the migraines from ever starting?
There are Blood Pressure meds that have the good side effect of preventing migraines: Correg, Relpax (eletriptan HBR) which I don’t know if it is for BP
as it was in the pile of freebies that I mooched off the Dr. the last time I went in.
I have also tried with very good success supplements:
L-Lysine (500 mg) and L-Arginine ( 1000 mg)
Which when combined give me radioactive powers …oh wait…have prevented scores of migraines (barometrically related) from ever even starting. It works so good for me that what happens is I start to forget that I need to take these two supplements and slowly the migraines return, like an enormous cockroach.
I haven’t tried it with hormonal migraines or stress or food-trigger migraines, as the latter two are under control in my life. For hormones, it is usually Imitrex or correg. Sometimes both along with wishing for death.
A friend of mine ( a DR. of urology) suffers from the same kind of migraines as I do (barometric) and swears by Magnesium which , the other perk of this supplement, he tells me, is it gives you loose poop. That’s always a plus, in my book.when you get older it is all about the poop. I haven’t tried this yet, but I will.
Discuss this with your doctor. YMMV.
My migraines started when I was 10. Though nobody thought of migraines. (This was over 20 years ago, and kids didn’t get migraines, they were just faking it to skip school) :rolleyes: I wasn’t faking the blinding pain that left me crying uncontrollably for up to 4 days at a time, but everyone thought it was all in my head. (I’m not kidding, that was the general consensus) I learned irony early.
I ran the gamut from MRI’s to CAT scans to EEG’s. They figured it had to be a tumor, but never found anything. Deemed psychosomatic and told to take 1000 mg ibuprofen at age 13. It did help, kind of. It lowered the pain so I could function, but lost out on some prime summer days riding my bike and winter weekends on the snowmobile.
Trust me, I know what you’re going through.
Around 16 or 17, I had them less and less frequently. By 18 I suffered my final one. I was lucky enough to outgrow them (knock on wood) and also found out that convoluted way, that they were migraines. At the age I was getting them, it’s likely a person will outgrow them. I know you’re younger, so you may also get lucky. But IANAD, so don’t bank your hopes on my post.
How long have you been suffering and when did you notice the developement?
I was going to suggest this, but substitute her mom for herself.
My mother also claimed that “Kids don’t get headaches.”
I only had to puke on her, her kitchen and her $400 shoes a handful of times and she got the message.
Now if I have a migrane and she’s around, she brings me an icepack and tells other people to shut the fuck up.
Ah - the power of puke. 
(ps - feel better)