Ha ha ha ha ha. Good one.
Don’t know if it was me or the spell check but you gotta laugh at yourself when it’s funny. Of course I’ve yelled die you MF migraine so maybe there is a Lord Migraine (spelled with an “i”). Gotchya.
Ouch, much sympathy!!! Is this your first? IANAD, but from what I understand from our family history (my mom, sis and I all suffer), it’s inherited, and generally starts when the victim is young and tends to taper off in later years, as it has done in all three of us.
Before Imitrix (If I’m remembering the name correctly), nothing could get rid of one for me or my mom or sister. The only thing that I’ve ever found that helped, before imitrix, was to lay down in a dark room and try to sleep.
My mom and sister suffered from horrible nausea along with theirs, while I had more trouble with the tunnel vision thing. Everything around me would just “white out” and I’d see these weird auras around everything. (do do dooo dooo).
Anyway, they do have some really good new drugs for migraines, unfortunately, they pretty much knock you out anyway, but the good news is that when you wake up, the headache is gone or at least bearable.
good luck, you poor girl.
I’m feeling somewhat better now. My doctor gave my Migrin, which is apparently some sort of herbal supplement. She first offered Vicodin, which I rejected on the grounds that it doesn’t do anything for my pain and makes me feel like I’m gonna toss my cookies too. I had it when I had my hysterectomy. Anyway. I just got up to check my email and this thread.
I can’t take caffiene (pity), but I did use an ice pack, and that helped quite a lot. My thanks to everyone who offered help, even if I can’t use a particular suggestion, perhaps someone else can.
Glad you’re feeling better Lynn.
For me, I have to take an Imitrex and two Excedrin right when I notice it coming on. If I don’t catch it in time, nothing will stop it – I just have to wait for the puking and then sleep for a couple hours. Mine are hormonal though.
Coffee and ibuprofen is my treatment of choice, but the biggest thing I’ve done is learn to consciously relax, and specifically to relax the muscles of my face and neck. I find myself doing it all the time, migraine or no, which I think helps a lot with the tension that triggers them. But when I feel the thing coming on, I take some pills, try to duck into a dark quiet room, close my eyes, and breathe slowly while deliberately relaxing the muscles in my face and head.
Any headache can, for me, turn into a migraine, so make sure you avoid things that can cause headaches in general. It’s a good idea to avoid addiction to coffee (not applicable in your case, of course) because caffeine withdrawl is a major trigger of migraines in a lot of folks. Stay away from loud noises that cause headache, and so forth.
Darkness, quiet, and lots and lots of sleep are the only things that can cure my migraines. Thank god I haven’t had one in the past three years.
Hope you get to feeling better, Lynn.
Having not read the thread, I’m sure I’m repeating someone but…IMITREX, the best friggen migrane med in the world (for me anyways). I wish I could have had it 20 years ago. I only started with it 5 or so years ago. Personally I use the injectable for two reasons, first I used to get to sick to my stomach (from the migrane) to take a pill, I would just gag on it and spit it out. Now my migranes arn’t that bad (they’ve gone from debilitating to really painful and annoying, but tolerable). Second reason…You have a pounding headache, you’re throwing up, any movement makes your head throb even more, who wants to wait 20 mins for a pill to start working, when the injectable is a matter of seconds. BTW the timeline for me is usually something like…
30s-1m I can feel the meds in my body (it brings on an extreme rush of tightness, almost like from the middle of my ribcage to the top of my jaw is on pins and needles and my jaw gets really stiff, the first time I took it I thought I was having a heart attack, but I don’t mind it, it tells me the meds are fresh and about to start working, the older the meds, the less extreme that feeling is and the less potent the meds seem to be…but anyways)
2m-5m headache starts decreasing fast
usually around the 10-20m mark the headache is pretty much gone. If I was feeling sick from the headache that seems to hang around another 10 or 20 mins. People always ask me why I would want to give myself a shot (they really cringe when they see me use that STAT dose auto inject thing on my calf) when I can just take a pill. Well, why take a pill when with the shot the headache is gone by the time the pill would just be starting to take effect, and the second response “You don’t get migranes, do you?” Wait till your in the worst pain you can imagine and it’s been like that for several hours, then tell me you couldn’t give your self a quick shot if you knew that would end the pain in a just a couple of mins. I love my imitrex. Not a huge fan of the statdose system, but that’s another story.
I went 17 years without ever getting a migraine. Was introduced to the wonderful world when I was doing an overnight visit at the college I’m now at. Have only ever gotten them here. Odd.
Anyway: I’ve yet to find anything that truly works, beside a combination of a handful of tylenol, dark room, and earplugs (gotta love the lack of quiet in dorms…). If it’s really bad (as in literally can’t stand up due to pain bad), I’ll take a swig or two of NyQuil, which results in me falling off the face of the earth for the next five hours.
You can pre-emptively stop a migraine? This is news to me.
Got to agree with Joey P and the injectable IMITREX. [although it’s called IMIGRAN here]
The injection - I inject in my thigh- works very fast.
I can’t keep anything in my stomach when having a migraine, so pills are out. Nausea also makes me susceptible to smells.
So, a dark room with fresh air, lots of sleep, earplugs and the injection does the trick for me.
Best of luck, Lynn.
Glad you are feeling better, **Lynn **.
I googled the stuff your doctor gave.
Interesting. I have bookmarked it.
For all migraine sufferers:
I know that it feels like the only way to make the pain go away is to take a large hammer and hit your head repeatedly until your head stops feeling like it’s about to explode. I know that you’re probably in incredible pain, and therefore not thinking very clearly, so I would just like to remind you that this is not a cartoon, and your head will not spontaneously regrow, so this is probably not a good idea.
My neurologist gave me what he calls an “abortive” to take when I get a migraine. Mine is called Axert. If that doesn’t work, then I also have a “rescue medicine,” AKA narcotic, Vicodin. I was given Percocet first, but after I had awful, awful dizziness, I got switched to the Vicodin, which is so much better (No side effects and still makes the pain go away!)
If you end up getting them incredibly frequently (like several times a week), and have tried several different preventative medicines and none work, you may want to discuss the possiblity of Botox with your doctor. Surprisingly enough, it has been shown that these injections do, indeed, make the pain from the migraines not occur for about three months. I am a walking example of how wonderfully this works.
Yes, indeedy! Provided you learn what your pre-migraine signs are and what works to abort the migraine for you.
My recommendation to you: Pay close attention and try to figure out if you have any early warning signs of migraine. And go to the doctor. If you’re only getting migraines at school, that’s telling you something. Perhaps something they use in the dining hall, like msg, is a trigger for you.
Me, I used to get migraines only about 2x per year. Fortunately, I figured out my early warning signs (numbness in right hand, visual auras) any my magic bullet (4 advil), so it wasn’t a big deal.
Then about 1.5 years ago, I started getting cluster migraines. I had them 6-8 days per month, and the advil just didn’t help that much any more. I went to the neurologist, who put me on a beta-blocker (Inderal) which has taken care of things beautifully. After about a week on the Inderal, the headaches were gone. I didn’t take it for a week (just being forgetful) and they came back. They went away again once I went back on. The doc also had me try various migraine drugs for when they did occur, but nothing worked better than the 4 advil.
NOW you tell me.
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History has a display called something like “Medicine through the Ages”, and there are various ancient medical tools and techniques available. One 3D display that always fascinated me as a child was a depiction of Stone Age men, a doctor, a patient, and a couple of helpers. The doctor was drilling a hole in the patient’s head, to let the demons out. I had always wondered WHY anyone would want to do that. These past couple of weeks, I found out. It felt like I had a really bad abcess in my skull, and if I could just open it and drain it, that the pain would go away.
It’s mostly gone now. I have a tiny bit of pain still, but nothing I can’t easily cope with. My thanks to everyone who wrote.
I used to get migraines once or twice a year. Then suddenly, about two years ago, I started getting them once a month (hormonally triggered, of course). After about six months straight of missing a day of work each time, I went to my doctor, and she gave me Axert. It was a relevation - the agonizing pain and weird visuals were all gone in about five minutes flat! Now I just take one as soon as my eyes start to go all sparkly, and I never actually experience any pain.
She was actually pretty surprised that she got the exact right medication for me on the first try. Apparently there’s usually a lot of trials and adjusting.
Pre-medication, I had some coping techniques that usually worked. Sleeping it off in the darkest room I could find was the only cure. But if that wasn’t an option, or as a way to help me relax enough to fall asleep, I could get by for a little while using a vizualization that I came up with as a kid. I would picture the pain as little specks in my body. Everytime I breathed out I would breathe some of those specks out too. (If you have a good imagination you have to be careful not to breathe them back in!) I still use this for colds, etc.
Other things that helped a little:
- A cold compress across my eyes or the back of my neck.
- Pressing my eyes with my fingers or the heel of my palms, for about a minute. (Too long increases the pain instead of relieving it.)
- Squeezing the back of my neck.
- Some Tylenol never hurt, of course.
Others have already warned about the dangers of large doses of Tylenol (I knew one girl who nearly shut her liver down permanently from too much Tylenol, and permanently damaged it), but since you say you can’t do caffeine, either, Lynn, stay away from Excedrin as well, which not only has aspirin in it but caffeine as well, I believe. I had regular hormonal migraines for about ten years (which finally went away a few years ago, thank heaven), and was willing to try just about anything, so one time and one time only tried the Excedrin. Frankly, the headache was better than how my stomach felt after the aspirin hit it.
I’ve only had a couple stray migraines in the last five years, and not too severe, so a few hours lying down in a dark room with a good dose of ibuprofen is generally all I need. But if they ever get regular again, I’ll definitely be visiting my doctor; I don’t do suffering well.