Okay, in the past month I have been in the hospital twice with mind splitting migraines.
I went to the doctor today to get my script refilled for my amitriptyline and she also gave me a script for Midrin.
The first is something I take every nite, and the second she said is for if I get one while taking the preventative. Midrin is an abortive med for migraines and if they get strong enuff to get thru the Amitriptyline the Midrin should stop it.
Anyone else here use it? Does it work? She had thought about Imitrex and I still might go to that if the Midrin doesn’t cut it.
I mean the past few have been so bad that I haven’t been able to see and have had to carry a bowl with me because of nausea. A minor one for me is sitting in a dark closet with a pillow over my head crying. I get those alot, and it is one reason why I am almost blind in my left eye.
I take Midrin as well as welbutrin for migraines. The combination has shortened the duration of my migraines, but the Tylenol in the Midrin makes my legs jumpy and I usually can’t stay in bed.
They did tell me not to take any Tylenol with it since it already has it.
I did get the script filled and have yet to use it. But as we know that is a good thing that I haven’t used it yet. Who knows with the way my day is going though!
And thanks for responding to me. I know that we aren’t the only people who suffer, and I haven’t been around to bump this in the past couple of days.
So hopefully this will give it a bump for the weekend and I can get a few other peoples reactions.
Does the jumpy leg thing go away after a while? And I guess more importantly does it put you to sleep? It helps me alot to get some good solid sleep with a migraine.
I used to take amityptyline as a preventative, and it was quite effective for a while, but like most things I’ve taken, it began to get less effective. So we increased the dose, but then I got lots of nasty side effects and had to try something else.
Midrin never did a thing for me.
I took Depakote for quite a while as a preventative, but I gained 45 lbs on it - one of the common side effects is that it’s an appetite stimulant. I’ve been off of it for a couple of years.
I have probably tried 5 or 6 other preventative drug therapies over the years - can’t remember most of them. They either did nothing or only worked for a while, and dosage increases generally triggered bad side effects.
Earlier this year, I was taking 2x180mg of Verapamil a day for a while. No migraines, but my blood pressure got so low (98/60, it turns out) that I almost passed out in the shower one day. Now I take 180mg plus Zoloft, and it is working ok.
I’ve used Imitrix injections, Imitrix inhaler, Imitrix pills, and a bunch of the other abortives. Currently using Zomig, which is fairly effective (get rid of them 80% of the time).
When the migraine abortives fail to work (fairly often depending on the abortive), I’ve tried Vicodan, Stadol, VV cocktail (Vicodan and Valiume), Darvocet, and a bunch of other things. They don’t tend to do much. Stadol was the worst - spaced my out big time for about an hour, then the migraine came back worse than it was before the meds.
Good Luck in finding something that works for you.
Good luck with your migraines Kricket…sending good vibes your way…
This crappy Iowa weather has given me the mother of all head colds, so I’ll join you in the splitting headache department… 
anyone for some hot toddies ?
I feel your pain. I get them 2-3 times a week, but I’ve only had to go to the hospital once. Nothing has ever worked for me, not four preventative medicines (Depakote and three others I don’t remember the names of…but I’d recognize if I saw) and a slew of as-needed ones, but Excedrin PM helps because it makes me sleepy. Sleep is usually what I use to get rid of them, but it’s kind of hard to sleep when you’ve got really bad ones like you described. Excedrin PM might help you. It’s over the counter, too.
Imitrex didn’t work for me, BTW, but I only tried it three times. Besides, it was $13 a pill.
Yes Dave I think that a lot of it has to do with our lovely weather.
When I woke up this morning I knew it was going to do something because I have the starting of a day from hell in my head. Couldn’t even take the kids to see the parade.
My goodness Porcupine! I feel for you.
Although the Demerol only takes the edge off for me at the hospital it has a bad habit of giving me panic attacks. It really sucks because I feel so out of it but yet I feel that I just have to go. My friend came back from having a cigarette while I was being watched for the 15 minutes that they monitor you after the shot, and I was trying to take out my IV to go home.
The last time I got one and had to go it took my husband and my friend 2 hours to talk me into it just because of the panic attacks. By then it was so bad I couldn’t see or move away from the toilet.
Suprisingly the computer doesn’t bother me most of the time when I have one. It mostly is loud noises, bright lights, and smells.
I know that the Imetrex is terribly expensive and would hate to try it if it wasn’t going to work.
I’ve tried to get the doctors to just remove my left eye, but they told me that that wouldn’t help anyway. That’s what they think! I know that if I could just get rid of my eye then it would be alright.
Another migraine sufferer checking in.
[smart-ass] Jeez, take an aspirin you wuss, it’s just a headache. Stop complaining! [/smart-ass]
Just kidding! Stop hitting me!
Ok, time to get serious. I take 150 mgs. of Atenolol each day as a preventative. I used to also take 100 mgs. of Verapamil, (with only 100 mgs. of the Atenolol), but as porcupine said, my BP was so low, I always thought I was going to pass out. I would just stand up and get dizzy and light-headed and sick to my stomach.
The 150 mgs. of Atenolol seems to have worked pretty well at reducing the number and severity of the migraines, but I worry about taking something like that every day for the rest of my life. The doc says it’s okay, but I still think about it.
I have the Imitrex nasal spray (can’t keep the pills down) and it’s kind of a crap shoot as to whether or not it is going to work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. And they are INCREDIBLY expensive! Thank God for Rx plans!
I also have pills that are butabital, aspirin, caffiene and codiene. They work pretty well on the pain, but I usually need to sleep it off.
Bad Midrin experience: I took Midrin ONCE, years ago. I had a migraine, called in sick to work, took one of the new Midrins the doc had given me (new Rx) and went to sleep. School let out, I never picked up my daughters, the school called the house, but I never heard the phone ring, they called my husband, he got the girls, came home and could hardly wake me up. He was about to call 911 when he was finally able to rouse me. I have NEVER taken another one. YMMV.
Well, I wish I would have read Kinseys’ post an hour ago!
I have spent the afternoon running in and out of the cold which made my headache start into a migraine, so I took the Midrin.
Should be alright since it’s the weekend and everybody is home.
My husband and I just got into an argument over the diet that I am supposed to follow. You all know the drill, no caffine, no smoking, no alcohol.
So, as I sit here and time this waiting to feel the effects of the Midrin I am eating a Milkyway, smoking, and drinking a Mountain Dew. Yep, that will show him!
And a great question also Kinsey. How many times have you all had people who have never suffered with a migraine to tell you to just take some Tylenol or Asprin and get over it?
My husband said that to me once and only once. He got one for himself and lay in bed all day acting like he was dying. Well, I told him that now he knows what I go thru and I don’t get the pleasure of laying in bed all day. I am still expected to cook, clean and basically function.
He takes it pretty easy on me about them now! Ah, sweet justice!
Do those commercials for Excedrin Migraine piss anybody else off as much as they do me? Particularly as it’s the same stuff in a new box with a higher price tag? And if Excedrin worked on a freaking MIGRAINE somebody would have noticed a long time ago? Like me? Or you?
I only get them a few times a year, but I do get them, and the only thing that helps is to get horizontal and not move for several hours. If I can get to sleep that helps a LOT. I don’t get them enough to bother with the expensive prescription stuff.
They piss me off more. :mad:
I guess I have to consider myself luckier than some of you. I get bad headaches that doctors have classified as migraines, yet I’ve never had to take anything stronger than Vicodin to get rid of them.
[mini-rant] I think it would really, truly suck if I had to go to the ER in order to get rid of one of my headaches. I’ve worked with enough ER doctors to know that anybody coming into the ER with chronic headaches are held in low esteem in the doctor’s mind because they think all migraine headache sufferers are exhibiting “drug-seeking behavior”. Yes, some of them are drug-seeking, only because they are in pain so often that their doctors keep on giving them narcotics, then cut them off after the patient gets addicted. The patients can no longer get the drugs from their private doctors that they now need not only for the headache but to feed the monkey on their backs, so they go to the ER every week or so until that hospital catches on to their scheme, then they switch to another hospital ER and so on and so forth. [/mini-rant]
Yes, oh, yes… You won’t behave how many of my otherwise intelligent friends actually buy that idea…Dammit, it’s just excedrin in a different box, with a phamplet about migraines in it.
However, sometimes Excedrin does work with my migraines. But I have imitrex to take when over-the-counters don’t work. I don’t take a preventive.
My migraines don’t always incapacitate me, but if they do, I lay down with an ice-pack on the back of my head and over my eyes. That, with the imitrex and excedrin usually does it for me…along with some sleep.
So far the people at the ER have been very understanding. But then again I don’t go in every week either. Once last month and once the month before, and then it was a whole year before that. The last time I was in they did let me know that I should go back and see my doctor since the migraines were comming back and that they couldn’t treat me again because as you said it is a narcotic.
But, hey check the time. I have finally, after taking three Midrin, taken my Amitriptyline. I don’t think that the Midrin is going to be effective for me. Kinda sucks since even with insurance I doubt I could cover Imetrix.
And the one thing that annoys me about those commercials, or any migraine commercials for that matter, is that they show people taking the meds and then it’s all better! Just that easy.
I just saw one for Imetrix where the lady takes one and then goes to work. All better now. Isn’t that stuff pretty hardcore? On top of it she went to work around sharp objects and fire.
Like I said I took the Amitriptyline a half hour ago or so and I know here shortly I will be zoning.
I think I’m just about ready to start getting them.
We do have a female family history of migraine. My mom, her sister, my grandma, my great-grandma, and back even further. My sister gets them as well. I, however, have not.
All of the women in my family that get migraines usually get them during PMS. Gee, Persephone, how did you get so lucky, you may be asking yourself. I’m not. I have epilepsy instead, and with the exception of the few seizures I’ve had during my pregnancies, every seizure I’ve had has been during PMS.
Slight hijack:
I took Depakote to control my seizures, for about four years. Did a fabulous job…but I gained about 50 pounds. I finally couldn’t deal with the weight gain anymore, and my doctor switched my meds for me. I lost all 50 pounds in about 8 months, just by getting off Depakote. I didn’t excercise or anything. My appetite decreased. The weight just fell off.
ANYWAY, I’ve been getting some headaches lately, and tonight I was talking to my mom about them, inquiring if they might be the beginnings of migraines (these headaches have been kind of bad, but not incapacitating like migraines are). As I was describing them, my mom was literally finishing my sentences for me. As a veteran migraine sufferer (she gt her first one about three days after I was born, 33 years ago), her advice to me was to get my butt to a doctor ASAP and try to nip this in the bud. She told me that since she had a complete hysterectomy 5 years ago, she still gets them occasionally, but they aren’t quite as bad, they’re much less frequent, and respond much better to meds.
If anyone’s got any good links to migraine information, please email me! I would greatly appreciate it!