AIBU to want to slay people who claim they have a migraine when it's just a sore head?

[cfc]

Even more irritating than those who have a cold and claim it's a touch of 'flu (my MIL). As if you could get a touch of 'flu!

But those who say 'oh, I've got a migraine' when they blatantly haven't. I want to say to them oh, is your sight gone? Has your stomach closed? Are you being sick or having the runs? Is the pain bad enough to warrant a doctor's visit to give you a shot of effing MORPHINE?

No?

Then it's not a migraine, fool.

And relax.

YANBU at all! My ex used to belittle my migraines and accuse me of saying 'I've got a migraine' when I just had a headache. I could never get it through to him that the experience was totally different at every level, and the pain, horriffic though it can be, is often not the worst of it. I get vestibular migraines that cause awful vertigo and my entire sense of consciousness changes, often well before the pain and nausea arrive. They don't rule my life quite so much any more since my GP prescribed Sumatriptan to take at the first sign, which works probably 70% of the time, but they used to last anything up to four or five days at a time. The worst one I've ever had in terms of the intensity of the pain (pre sumatriptan) also left me unable to speak - I knew what I wanted to say but it was coming out as gobbledegook. That was scary. Thought I was having a stroke or something, although thankfully it didn't last all that long.

:)

Ladyevens ... I keep a spoon in the fridge for the same reason

God I hate migraines, but as i don't want to be a hypochonder, i clal it a "bad headache". I get flashing lights, blurred vision and bits of my vision "missing", weird sensation of stomach closing yet feeling nauseous. Unable to read or talk. i couldn't make a phone call don't think.

I humour people who call their headache a "migraine" though, and their cold a "flu". I do think a bit less of them though. Privately.

i also suffer with migraines, i know when one is coming because my vision has black patches and blurrs. i know by then i have about 15 mins to get pain killers don me before I'm too nauseous and throw them straight back up.
i find crawling into a cool dark room and just trying to sleep it off is the only remedy.
i also had swine flu last year and my god i have never been so ill in all my life. i physically couldn't move out of bed. so when my dad who is the worst says "Ive got touch of flu" i have no sympathy for his snotty nose and slightly sore throat.

YANBU.

I've suffered from headaches for years. My first proper adult migraine was when I was 4 weeks postnatal with DS1.

I thought I was having a brain hemmorage and about to die. I saw flashing lights, couldnt focus or see, lost my speech and thought I was having a stroke.

I have to lay down in a dark room for hours, and am affected for days afterwards.

Incidently I had 1 as a teen - linked to my hormones again - where my whole right side went numb and I had scans etc as they thought it was a stroke. Scariest shit ever.

Headaches you pop a pill and are slightly annoying. Migraines are awful. I had to ring a friend one evening when I got one - I'm a single parent - as I couldnt care for my children at all. Once the ex came home to find me laying on the kitchen floor with DS1 who was 14mo, as I had one and it was the only way of keeping him in one place and being able to look after him. Scary scary things.

I'm on the Mirena coil now, as I simply cant have them like that as a single parent. Weirdly contraceptives seem to prevent mine.

It does bug me loads when people with headaches say they are migraines, they are so so different.

I've only ever had a migraine once and flu once. I fully respect how awful they are and also hate people who think they're amazingly ill with a mild headache

Yanbu. I've only had one once, and didn't even have any pain - just the visual part of it, two hours of just being able to see swirls of random colour, was enough to make me feel like I was dying. I slept pretty much solidly for the next 3 days.

I used to have them but not really any more - now I just get really bad headaches. They stopped when I changed my diet - as did my IBS, acid reflux and general feelings of nausea after eating. The headaches are like a mild migraine if I don't get to them in time - red hot banging on one side, behind the eye, neck pain, any movement causing a change in blood pressure increases the banging to explosive proportions - but they're still not as bad as the migraines were.

Do any of you migraine sufferers get them when it's thundery? My Dad does, and I used to - now I get a headache with thundery weather.

Bit of an overreaction, I think, wanting to slay people......I get migraines, they're pretty mild by most people's standards, I get pain on one side, nausea, exacerbated by movement, can just about work if I've taken paracetamol in time, but am I not allowed to call it a migraine unless I'm crying and wanting to die? Is there some sort of pain threshold at which I'm allowed to use the term - a kind of 'harder than thou' club?

You have no idea what people's symptoms are or how they feel. Some people you're dismissing probably do have a migraine, just not the same as yours. Some people misuse the term. Get over it.

I hate that too. I remember having a sniffely nose and a colleague said 'oh you've got flu, really bad...'

No, I've got a runny nose. People can die from flu - nobody died from a bit of snot.

Yes, one of my triggers is when a storm is about to break (the other main ones being stress and dodgy lighting). My dad gets what he calls 'sick headaches' when a storm is coming.

i get painful migraines and non-painful ones (zigzagy vision, dizziness and sickness)

YANBU to be irritated, if you can walk in a straight line and have your eyes fully open in daylight i would say you've got a headache

I have had migraines, but for me personally, I 'only' get the zigzags/odd patterns that remain in the centre of my vision regardless of where I look. This slowly drifts over my head and is over in about 20 minutes. I don't have any sickness, pain or any of the other symptoms described by some people on here but I would say it was a migraine. I have had much worse headaches. I think it is a personal thing, worse for some people than others.

From netdoctor:

"People often use the word ?migraine? to refer to headaches of many different types. So-called ?classical? migraine attacks have several features:

• headaches that occur in bouts of between roughly 4 to 72 hours
• the headaches usually affect one side of the head at a time, although both sides may be affected in separate attacks
• the headaches are usually throbbing and worsened by normal physical activity

nausea and/or vomiting

• preceding symptoms, called ?aura?, that most often are visual, such as zigzag lines or flashing lights across or at the edges of the fields of vision
• other symptoms can include sensitivity to light and sound, or non-visual aura such as a sensation of tingling in the body.

Only about 15 per cent of people experience visual aura before an attack.

?Common migraine? refers to the majority who have all the other symptoms but no aura.

Rarely some people with migraine experience transient loss of power of a limb with severe attacks, or temporary difficulty with speech."

Nothing in there about walking in a straight line, crying, eyes open or closed, wanting to die, etc.

To be honest when I 'only' have one of my bad headaches I suspect I would welcome being slain. Regardless of whether they are worthy of the name migraine or not. And I suspect not as I have had migraines in the past and these are different though still agonising.

Suffering is suffering regardless of what you call it. Is sympathy in such short supply you need to ration it?

While I agree YANBU, I will also add that "just a cold" caused my DS to be admitted to hopsital for a week with a very narrow escape from intensive care. So I am now always wary about the sense that a cold is milder than flu. Normally it is, but it isn't always

I get migraines. They're normally focussed on the left side of my head right behind my eye. They start during the night when I'm asleep and I wake up with them. I can't move my head - even massaging it or laying down doesn't help, and it basically feels like my eyes will pop out of my head. When the pain gets to its peak I feel nauseous and have vomited on occasion too.

On recovery, it literally feels like weight has been lifted off my shoulders and head, and my eyes remain half open like I'm coming off a drug. This can last for up to a day.

So, OP, YANBU. A headache is very different from a migraine.

Oh, and I have fainted from the pain once aswell. Horrible thing.

my personal fave is the ones at death's door who can still log on to the internet day in day out, regardless of how sick they are

Flu twice, migraine every month since the age of fourteen. I get the aura (the edges of my v
Field of vision go crystalline, pretty but sodding scary)/sickness then stomach shutdown/one side/pulsing/tooth rattler types with the added delusion that my brain is melting out of my ears:( My ex gets retinal. I would rather have the pain than the sight loss:(

I'd not wish either illness on anyone. I often think that migraine has just been assimilated into general language for pain instead of a specific subsect of conditions. Some people appear genuinely surprised when I discuss mine, and have no idea that there is a wide range of symptoms. I'm not sure that it is intentional ignorance, though do agree that there are those who just take the mick:(

How do those of you who experience loss of vision cope with driving? I can't drive and have failed several tests, and deep down I think I may be sabotaging myself because I am terrified of what would happen if I was on the motorway, say, and my vision went. I have been experiencing random migraines since I was about eleven, accompanied by numbness in the arms and speech problems, and the first symptom is a big black hole in the vision. It's making me feel a bit sick just typing the words.

Yabu. I get bad weather-induced headaches and I've just found out they are a rare type of migraine when I thought they were just a headache. My point being that migraines vary a lot in causes and impacts. Everyone tolerates pain differently so just let them have a moan.

Chandon Sounds like you do suffer migraines to me.