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.

in short I agree with spugglers.

I get migraine with aura and have done since around the age of 16. If I can take painkillers before my stomach shuts down then I can usually nip it in the bud - I use Migraleve which, in all honesty is the only thing that works for me.

If I don't catch it in time then I get nausea, vomiting, pins and needles, can't speak properly and generally feel like death. I can cope with the headache - it's the other symptoms that I just can't get beyond.

On one occasion I was convinced I was having a brain haemorrhage as the pain was so bad. In my defence, my mum had just suffered a stroke, caused by an aneurysm. I have since found out that sufferers of migraine with aura are more likely to have a bleed.

OH also gets migraine - usually on a Saturday morning when he sleeps in. He gets no aura or warning.

I guess everyone has a different experience?

Yanbu I can't phone in sick with a migraine cause I wouldn't be able to find the phone see the keypad or dial a number

Migraines are terrifying and debilitating

I get migraines.

I don't get any pain at all. I used to. Used to be laid up in bed with my eyes screwed shut, feeling like someone was actually trying to smash their way out of my skull and that I was going to throw up.

But now, it starts with suddenly realising that I have a big swirly grey blank spot over whatever I am looking directly at, iyswim. Then waves of nausea, like travel sickness. Then the grey swirly spot gets very slowly bigger and bigger until it is all I can see. Once it has filled my entire field of vision, gone. Clear as a bell. The other weird thing is although I can feel no pain at all, it feels like it ought to hurt.

That's the only way I can explain it. A pain that isn't there, but there's an awareness of it. Even though it isn't there

I also smell things. Burning dust. Which I was recently told - by someone on here, actually - is also migraine.

I never knew.

So - I think you may be being unreasonable (understandably!), not every migraine is the same, but that doesn't mean they don't affect someone.

YANBU.

I got my first at 28 when I was put on the pill. Hormonal triggers are common. I wish I'd never ever taken the pill. I remember days of being so ill I couldn't move my head or I'd be sick. Couldn't take painkillers or they'd bounce.

They have got better with age (and disappeared with pregnancy) but I'm expecting one tomorrow. Hormones again, though thankfully down to one or two a month rather than one every week or so.

I never go anywhere without paracetamol and codeine tablets (first line: if they work then I can keep going) Sumatriptan (second line - they will work if the P&C don't) and metaclompromide (anti-emetics) to take first, so the treatment pills stay there! I get raised eyebrows occasionally, but I don't care.

I have frequently been found trying to sleep under my desk, or hiding in a storeroom with the lights off. I even keep a pillow behind a filing cabinet for if I need to lie down!

I also don't drink caffeine. Stopping that helped immensely.

My drugs (sumatriptan) usually stop the pain coming if I take them early enough but not the confusion and blindness. I genuinely couldn't call for help at all as I just stare mystified at the phone unable to grasp the concept of numbers never mind telephone numbers.

I once read you lose 20-30 points of IQ when you have a migraine. At least. So yes maybenow I can understand why you'd get confused. I always feel like I'm trying to think through treacle, and have to force thoughts out.

I have only realised on this thread that I haven't had one for 14 years. They are no where near a headache. I do know someone who got addicted to opiates, as a form of treatment.
Is my msg of any help?

I don't do caffeine anymore, whether or not that is relevant I do not know, but I tried everything.
I used to lie in a darkened room wanting death. I feel for you migraine sufferers.

And why do men not tend to get them?
Not that I would wish them on anyone.
(blessed relief that my last was in 1998, and a few years later stopped keeping a record.)

I don't know what to do to help sufferers, but do pm me if you want to, although all I did was cut out msg and caffeine. I didn't see a gp about it butI would be interested to hear what a gp would have said . I don't want to tempt fate but my last was 14 years ago.

I don't know much about opiates/morphine, but I think that can lead o bigger problems.
(faints with relief that I have not had one for over a decade)

pm me if you think it might help but I think that I have told you most of what I have learnt.
xx

No that;s rubbish about men not getting them - both my father and my brother get heinous migraines. 3 day jobs for my Dad, lying in a darkened room (think I may have typed this up thread already) and my brother gets them almost every weekend, they don't go until he throws up.

judy, my mum cut out msg, chocolate and oranges to improve her migraines. Mine are triggered by tiredness, irregular meals, certain cheeses, polo mints (don't know why!) and microgynon (when I stopped for my week off I would get a migraine every time). I have been called a drama queen and a wimp for not being able to stay up till goodness knows when and then get up the next day as usual, or go all day with no food (as if being too busy to eat makes you a saint anyway). and accused of skiving. I consider food and rest to be a medical need not an excuse to be lazy. The people with phoney migraine make it harder for the genuine to be believed. I was scared of getting a migraine during pregnancy because I take migraleve but never needed it, the hormone changes were a positive thing.

I'd not realised that people got migraine and headache confused until I had to be referred to a neurologist for persistent migraine. I knew I was having migraines, but it took ten minutes of in depth questioning (do you feel sick with the headache? Do you lose vision? On which side? How is the loss of vision? Does light hurt? etc etc) for her to be convinced that I wasn't just a time-wasting heache sufferer! Then we got on with the consultation!

I also had it explained in terms of a threshold. It's not that coffee will bring it on, or red wine, or lack of sleep, or dehydration BUT I have a threshold above which a migraine is quite likely. So if I eat dark chocolate, drink and have too much and not enough sleep then there's a good chance I'll be suffering for it later.

Hormone drops are a leading cause of migraines, which is why you get them on the pill week off. One reason I gave up the pill. Pregnancy usually has fairly stable (if high) levels so you're unlikely to get that trigger.

I suffered awfully from hyperemesis to begin with; when I got to week 17 or 18 I got a thumper of a migraine and spent the day flat out but happy, because it meant that my hormones were finally dropping a bit and my nausea was going to ease. It did.

Migraine comes from hemicrania, or half head. If someone's headache is bad but bilateral, it ain't a migraine.

Hormones would fit for me. I've always had fairly painless periods but for the past few months they've been absolutely awful - really bad cramps, really frustrated and angry for no real reason and the headaches/migraines have started in that time too.

I really hope this is a passing thing