To be pissed off to my friends reaction to my migraines

[RoastingYourChestnutsHurtsAlot]

And consider ditching her?

I have a very severe form of migraine that frequently put me in hospital.

It's meant I have had to cancel many a night out, many a catch up, take days off work etc etc. however I have one 'friend' whose response to these is 'you're over reacting they're only headaches surely they should be under control by now?' Along with 'lets go out and forget we're sick it'll do you good' and the classic 'it's not like they're that bad is it'

This is a person who claims she has migraines but then gets in her car and drives for an hour to a big shopping outlet centre, shops for 4 hours and drives home again during one.

I freely admit I don't know what's possible with a mild migraine so ^ may well be more than possible but to me if she had a genuine migraine, a genuine neurological debilitating life long condition, she wouldn't be so quick to tell me how to manage mine? So AIBU to be pissed off with her?

The GP did the neurological tests, all that pull me towards you, push me away stuff and screw up your eyes. She looked at my pupils.
I lost the use of one hand and was extremely confused. She said come back next week if you are not any better.
I did not get a CT scan though.
I am low risk for a stroke though, only smoke an e-cig and have low cholesterol and BP and am under 40.

Yes if you have migraines you are at increased risk of having a stroke which is why if your migraines mimic a stroke (like Hemiplegic ones do) it's so scary. Big difference is stokes are sudden, migraine the symptoms creep on

I get mild migraines, and can function (almost) normally. BUT I know how lucky I am as many people get them much worse. I would never compare mine with someone who is virtually blind and being sick with pain, as another poster said its a spectrum.

Your friend is being narrow minded in assuming they are all like hers, I think.

workhouse my migraines are almost exactly the same as yours. I wake with a headache which means it's already too late for most drugs tog met a grip. Something with codeine in numbs it a bit, but exacerbates the nausea. I can push through, but I've had enough by the third day. Definitely migraine.
Occasionally they come on in the day, and the. I get visual disturbance/aura first and the chance to take meds to sidestep the worst of it.

I'm glad the doctor checked you out thoroughly ral.

A friend of mine once ended up being rushed onto a neurological ward for tests for a migraine which was pretending to be a subarachnoid haemorrhage

YADNBU

My mum never suffers from illnesses ever. She is the hardest woman on earth with a immune system made from steal.
Yet migraines flaw her, bed bound until they clear.

Ive experinced migraines buy thankfully not to that level.

Your 'friend' is being very narrow minded. Fuck them.

I had migraines in my 30's. I am now 43 and ( fingers crossed) haven't had one for years. They started with visual disturbance, excruciating pain followed by milder pain and exhaustion. Gradually they got less severe and stopped. But I still can't imagine driving or going out whilst having a migraine. What is the difference between a mild migraine and a headache? Honest question!

What is the difference between a mild migraine and a headache?

With a migraine any pain is usually one-sided, you can want to avoid noise and bright lights, you can have nausea or vomiting, speech disturbances, trouble concentrating, strange visual effects like scintillating scotoma, weakness, weird sinus problems and dribbly eyes, and various other effects. You can have them without any pain at all, too.

Your friend is an ass. I suffer migraines and they are awful. They are nothing like yours, OP, I can (usually) do things with them still, which might some people might take to mean they're not migraines.

This, of course, is why they were misdiagnosed for four years, and I saw four different specialists and tried 6 different medications for an array of different conditions and had surgery under GA, an MRI and a bunch of other scans before someone figured it out. Ruined my life for a while. Getting treatment now. Much better.

Lesson here: migraines are tricksy beasts, no one should assume they know what one is like because they come in many forms. Not aimed at you, OP, I hasten to add! :)

So for me a mild migraine can involve feeling not quite right for a day, then a scintillating scotoma, then a few hours of mild one-sided pain, then a longer-than-usual night's sleep followed by a day where I feel slightly drowsy with a sore head. But except for the twenty minutes or so of visual aura, I'm completely capable of doing most normal daily activities if I just take some ibuprofen.

I forgot to say, also, migraines usually pulse in time to your heartbeat and get worse if you exert yourself, which isn't necessarily true of other headache types.

dragon I can only speak for myself and don't know if this applies to others. I call it a migraine as it is only on one side - and it's always the same side? - triggered by certain lights (eg. Flashing Christmas lights) and makes me feel nauseous. It helps to lie down in the dark.

But I am lucky not to suffer as badly as others, and There is no comparison.

I've had migraine and thank you lovely GP who prescribed the wonderful tabs that stop my particular sort in its tracks. It is very very NOT 'a bit of a headache'.

And I've had Influenza and will never ever ever describe a nasty common cold as 'a touch of Influenza' ever again. Not being capable of eating and barely of drinking, with fairly constant hallucinations.... thank you all DFriends who rallied round and looked after me.

The chicken sandwich and bowl of soup when I finally rejoined humanity on Day 5 remains one of my most wonderful memories!

I get regular migraines, I can tell when they are coming on and they last for a couple of days, which I have to spend horizontal with as little light and sound as possible.

I take a daily preventative tablet (Topiramate) and also have optical nerve block injections at Kings College hospital - they keep me just about functioning (although I've not worked for 5 years as I spend a third of the month lying in bed probably).

There is lots of help out there for anyone really struggling.

I had the weirdest prodrome in my one (and hopefully only ever) migraine.
I woke up in the morning and said to DH I feel really weird, like this massive impending feeling of doom. The only way I could describe it to DH was if I could see a massive tornado coming towards my home, or another planet coming to collide with earth, knowing when it happened we would all be dead. Obviously I knew this was not REALLY going to happen, but that is the way I felt. I have looked it up on Google and apparently you can get an emotional prodrome, but wondered if any migraine sufferers on here have ever experienced anything like that.
As someone with bipolar I have dealt with a massive range of emotions in my life, but nothing like this, it was the weirdest thing ever. The weird feeling was there when I got up and then the headache started at about 11 am and then got worse and worse.

YANBU. I hate that some people think a migraine is just a bad headache. I'm sick of trying to explain it to work - I just get my dh to tell my work I've got a vomiting bug whenever one hits (I lose the power of speech and can't even see my phone keypad to dial a number).

But I think it's one of those things that unless you've had one, you honestly can't understand what a migraine is.

ral my prodrome are massive panic attacks - highly embarrassing in public!

I've had vomiting in the dark in agony migraines. I've also had black out migraines and word slurring vocabulary loss. Strangely, the more scary my symptoms, the less pain I've had. Some have been completely pain free. Migraines are very strange things.
Mine are always, always hormonal.

I normally get 2 or 3 migraines each month and some times they can wipe me out for days. I end up distressed as the pain is so bad and pace up and down the bedroom as I cant even lie down. I end up wishing I could die so I dont have to deal with it any more. This week I have had them every day and I have not been able to do all the things I had planned to do.

so YANBU!

She's a plank.

I suffered with migraines frequently over 5 months.

They are hell.

I suffer from migraines with aura. Visual disturbance, pins and needles and then one sided head pain that can linger for several days and can be extremely severe.

However once the visual disturbance is over (about half hour) then I can often function to a certain extent if I need to and although I appreciate that not everyone is as lucky as me, I find the "it's not a migraine if you don't have to lie in a darkened room all day" comments extremely annoying - it's a spectrum! Milder migraines are still migraines!

I have had quite severe migraines - I don't think they are hemiplegic though as I have weakness/inability to move body all over! It's not just on one side, although I do have difficulty speaking etc. It does make you look like you have had a stroke and it's deeply humiliating to have to crawl out of somewhere on your hands and knees as slowly as a snail. You can't push through that, you can't stand upright!

To the person saying about emotional prodromes, I am often very depressed and feel really chaotic especially if I have a quite mild migraine. It only lasts til the migraine is gone though, it's extremely weird.

In terms of treatment, I take beta blockers and they really work. I have had almost no severe migraines when taking them and the frequency is way down. I'm just so happy about this- I was on the verge of having to tell my work I was incapacitated frequently and also I was worried I would lose my license. They honestly have given me my life back. I don't want to swap to any of the newer anti-d's, these seem to do the job and I'm just so lucky I found something that works.

My mum gets them and shes not one for a fuss but always had to retreat to a dark room when one was threatening to come on.
She had a TIA (a type of stroke) and has not had a migraine since, I don't know if it's because of medication.
We were interested to find out that they were hormonal, could be made worse by the pill and are linked to epilepsy.

I've had occular migranes (sp) over the past year which has been put down to stress (always have one before a huge deadline/when we had a huge financial problem one month etc).

The first time I had one dh took me to A&E because I was scared shitless I was having a stroke or something. I was watching TV and realised that I was having trouble reading any words - at first it didn't seem as if it was a vision problem, it was the weirdest thing. Just like you can't focus on something to see all of it.

Then it progressed to me seeing huge blank spots, then flashing lights which nearly obscured my sight completely. Then my speech got confused...I used the wrong words, like saying 'pass me the magazine' when it was a newspaper, or describing a sofa as a chair or asking for a glass of tea instead of a cup of tea. All fairly minor but poor dh was scared senseless the first time it happened.

I rarely if ever get any pain...the most recent one I had a mild headache after but nothing that kept me awake. Even though I know now that it's 'normal' for me, it's still scary when it's happening and leaves me feeling very vulnerable.

Yanbu op...mine is a fairly mild form and it's still not nice. To have those symptoms plus being in agony must be awful.

Workhouse - my migraines are a lot like yours. They last three days, almost every time. Sometimes I am on the verge of throwing up with the pain. Other times I can walk, talk, shop, and work, especially if I've taken my triptans in time (along with some dramamine to counteract the nausea from the migraine and triptan). Often the combination of meds wipes me out for a couple of hours, but then I'm OK.

I apologise. I've always thought they were the same degree for everyone, so sorry for the assumption.

I've tried everything over the years and recently it was suggested I ask my GP for Imigran (there is an Imigran Recovery available behind the counter but you have to jump through a few hoops to get it and it's not as powerful). I was given Imigran by the GP and you must take it as soon as you get the nod that a migraine is starting for it to work. I'm going to be ever so dramatic and say it has changed my life. If you've not tried it, I really recommend. Different meds suit different people but honestly, the first time I tried it, i felt human again within an hour and don't mind admitting that I cried with relief that something could make such a difference!