I have been suffering with migraines for most of my life. My parents are not sure when exactly my migraines began but we know I was very young, 5 or even younger. I clearly remember being left home by myself at the age of 7 when I had a migraine because I had 2 siblings and life can't stop for a family of 5 because one person can't function. Now before you think I was abandoned or something, I was left home for a few minutes while my brother or sister was dropped of at some function or school or a friend's house or something.
I grew up taking aspirin and Bayer on almost a daily basis to try to prevent migraines. My mom gets migraines as well. My dad used to get migraines when he was a teenager but he outgrew his. Neither of my siblings gets migraines.
I have gone through times when I get migraines more frequently and times when I don't get migraines very often. Something a bit odd is that when I was pregnant, both times, I never once got a migraine. I've been told often that people who get migraines like I do almost always have increased occurrences of migraines during pregnancy.
In the last year or so I've started getting migraines about 5 out of 7 days a week. This is the worst they've ever been. I usually average about 7 to 10 days a month and those would vary in severity from what I call "workable" meaning I can work through them to "leave me alone" meaning I need to be in a dark, quiet room sleeping it off.
I quite honestly don't know all my triggers. I do know two of my triggers, they are hormones and sinus pressure which is caused by temperature/humidity/climate change. As a result I take birth control pills continuously (I don't take the inactive pills) so that my hormones are as even as possible, this worked for about 5 months. I also take a sinus medication to keep my sinuses clear during the times of the year when we have big temperature changes like spring and fall, unfortunately this year our temperatures have not evened out yet (since August and it's now November!).
I just started a preventative medication for migraines in September called Topamax. I started it at 100mg once a day. When I first stated it it made me very dizzy and drunk feeling. I tried cutting it in half and still felt off. Finally my doctor suggested taking it at night and that helped. I was finally mostly migraine free for a couple weeks. I say "mostly" because there are some types of migraines that Topamax won't stop and unfortunately I apparently get these other types of migraines as well. I did have to increase back to the full 100 mg my doctor originally prescribed. My doctor had also explained that Topamax was designed to be taken twice a day but that if I could get away with taking it once a day that would be good. Well, it worked for about a month, then I was back to 4 migraines in 6 days.
I should mention here that I also take Treximet, this is to be taken after a migraine has started. This prescription only comes in a 9 pack, I don't know why but 9 pills don't last long and even when ordering through the mail like we have to for 3 months at a time, 27 pills don't last when the migraines come so often, then the insurance won't cover more pills for 3 more months.
So after the 4th migraine I called my doctor back and requested to increase the medication to twice a day, my understanding is that this is the maximum dosage. I've been taking this dose for 2 weeks now and so far so good, I have not had any migraines of any kind in those 2 weeks. I am hopeful that my body is not getting used to this medication and that's not why I started getting migraines again a couple weeks ago.
I've heard about the new Botox treatment but I haven't looked into actually doing this as a treatment. The research I've done has called this "mediocre" at best as far as a treatment for migraines. I get tension headaches but not really tension migraines so I don't know that Botox will help me anyway. I've heard good things about chiropractors but at $20 per visit and knowing that starting out I'd need to go at least twice a week then work down to weekly then maybe biweekly, monthly etc...I just don't have the money right now.
So for now, I'm hopeful that Topamax will finally be the thing that works for me. That I can be at least mostly migraine free.
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11/29/2010
Today I've had this feeling that if I wasn't taking Topamax I would most definitely have a migraine, it's like the migraine is trying so hard to break through and the medication is trying so hard to fight it off. I have the slightest of headaches, almost a migraine but not quite, not enough to take the Treximet, at least not enough for me to take it, especially considering I only get 9 pills a month.
This would be a day, before last January when I gave up diet coke and before I started Topamax and can no longer drink carbonated drinks, that I would try to drink caffeine to abate the headache...I'm not sure it every really worked but it made me feel better in some way.
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11/30/2010
So at 2:00 this morning I woke up with the worst headache imaginable and was in complete agony for 2 hours. You would think with all the migraine medications I would be able to sleep through the night without waking up to a migraine...I guess not. But I did wake up this morning with no lingering effects so that was good.
