Tell me all your useful stuff on Migraines - my poor teenager...

[lborgia]

Hello and help, please.

My 14 yr old has been suffering from migraines for a few months. He’s had a couple of really awful ones where I was very scared - but otherwise, they’ve just been “normal” awful.

Because the first one was so dramatic, the GP sent him to hospital, and they were great. They’ve check for every kind of physical problem (brain MRI etc) because he was almost hallucinating, and lost use of his arms etc, so we know there’s no stroke, or, I’m not sure what else, but anyway, they’re confident it’s “just” migraines.

He has to take Triptans when he feels it come on, unfornately he often wakes up with it, so it’s already happening by the time he realises.. although once he realised before he went to bed, and took medicine, and woke up well.

I’ve looked up the Migraine Trust and love their help, but wonder if you have any experiences of how to be supportive, make it less of a horrible experience, but also because my H doesn’t seem to think it can just be migraines. He is sure that he’s trying to get out of school - not necessarily in a skiving way, but avoiding something. This is worse now because he was fine over the weekend, and then woke up with a migraine on Monday. THe reason I don’t think this is the case, is because he has discussed some really difficult stuff with us in the last few months, so I don’t think he’s bottling up, and also, when he is well, he works really hard to catch up, organises extensions for his assignments etc, and is out the door really easily on non-sick days.

I cannot imagine any teenager doing that if they fundamentally had a problem with being at school?

Here are a couple of specific questions I’ve got - but any small thing that has brought you comfort, or your child, I’d be very grateful.

1 - Have you tried feverfew? I remember it from my childhood for headaches, but have just seen it on a migraine website.
2 - He doesn’t get high blood pressure, in fact, if anything, it’s low, so the stuff you take everyday to avoid migraines, would that still work? My understanding is that its main job is to lower bp,
3 - Do you get back to work / child back to school during te hangover/afterwards stage? My son often wakes from a big sleep so much better, but a bit groggy, and my inclination is to go with it, whereas DH thinks he should be back in school pdq.

There is a whole extra level of crap, which I’m obviously already alluding to, where DH doesn’t necessarily believe something unless he’s experienced it himself, and our marriage is a whole other issue at the moment. My experience of a few migraines is that I was completely wiped out by them, but they presented very differently to this, and I don’t want to assume that DS is incapable, and feed the ...can’t think of the word, idea that he’s incapable/needs to stay home being pathetic?!

Anyway, too much waffle, but I’m feeling a little fried by many things, and just thought some practical help on this particular topic would be a good start!

Thank you if you got this far.

[smurfy2015]

@lborgia the f.lux program does a good orange screen and can fade down or up depending on the time of day, it can also be disabled for an hour if want to see as white on a screen - I highly recommend it and its free which is a help

justgetflux.com/