Every Body Goes Haywire
I&#x27;m pleased to say that I am a <i>former</i> Migraine sufferer.<p>I&#x27;ve had the condition since I was 17 years old, when the first one hit.  It was such an intense pain that I begged my mom to take me to the emergency room -- certain my brain was bleeding since the pain included a number of other symptoms (blurry vision, dizziness, nausea and the like).  They sent me home with 1000mg of acetaminophen and basically told my mom that I was probably faking or just had a bad headache.  My experience with around two decades of dealing with this illness was that neither regular folks, nor doctors, take the condition terribly seriously.  People call their headaches &quot;Migraines&quot; having no idea that there&#x27;s a difference.  There&#x27;s drugs marketed for Migraine headaches that, in my experience, did very little and were targeted at people who get &quot;bad headaches that htey call Migraine&quot;.  The best description I could give of how it felt was &quot;like the worst &#x27;brain freeze&#x27; you&#x27;ve ever had but instead of ending after a few seconds, it goes on for a few days&quot;.  But everyone seems to have slightly different symptoms and until reading this article, I wasn&#x27;t even aware that it was possible to have Migraine <i>without</i> the associated headache (though I had heard about some of the other symptoms that I hadn&#x27;t experienced myself).<p>For me, a typical Migraine was 3-days long, twice a month, with increasing frequency during the fall and spring months.  I&#x27;d have the aura most of the time and the after-effects almost all of the time.  I&#x27;d been employed, full time, during the entire time that I lived with Migraine and because of its frequency, I rarely--if ever--took time off (try explaining to a boss that you need the day off because you have &quot;a headache&quot;).  I&#x27;d given a presentation to a room full of coworkers right in the middle of one -- my eyes watering the whole time from the pain.  Most of the time, though, I&#x27;d figure out ways to function -- sunglasses, staying still, contrast down all the way on the monitor, fasting for the day with frequent trips to the restroom to vomit air.<p>If normal people don&#x27;t take it seriously, doctors seemed to take it even less seriously.  The first question they&#x27;d often ask is &quot;did you miss work because of a headache?&quot;  Being too honest, I&#x27;d say &quot;no&quot; and they&#x27;d stop paying attention or prescribe an anti-inflammatory.  A doctor who took me moderately seriously prescribed two different triptan-based drugs with the assurance that &quot;my wife gets these -- when you have an aura, just take one and it&#x27;ll all go away.&quot;  The pain was dulled by a huge amount, but they came with enormous side-effects.  I would experience an intense sort of &quot;elation&quot; shortly after taking the pill, followed by a depression after the pain was gone (I&#x27;m <i>neither</i> of these things, normally, except for a small bit of listlessness after the Migraine had subsided).  The medical literature indicated mild variants of these symptoms but this was <i>anything</i> but minor to me.  I ended up finding out, by accident, when mixing this medicine with another medicine that affects serotonin, that my body lacks a gene required for properly flushing this medicine out of my system.  I was sent to the ER with ~103 degree fever, incredibly elevated blood pressure (I don&#x27;t remember the number but I remember the look on the nurse&#x27;s face when she took my blood pressure for the third time with the replaced cuff and got the same numbers), and was treated by staff who <i>was sure</i> I had taken some recreational drug and was having a bad reaction (they were shocked when the tox screen came back clean).  It was <i>probably</i> serotonin shock according to a doctor I saw well after this visit, but the ER staff was convinced I had some sort of psychiatric episode or took a drug they couldn&#x27;t screen for.  Regardless, they told me to never take a triptan again.<p>This incident resulted in me seeing a new doctor who suggested I try a medicine given -- in the past -- to people with epilepsy (and now commonly prescribed for bipolar disorder) called Depokote.  Ironically, it was <i>not</i> prescribed to handle Migraine, but rather whatever underlying problem caused my trip to the ER[0].  It was September, a month where I had gotten Migraines weekly every year since I was 17.  After a month of taking the medicine I had <i>no</i> headaches.  I did a quick google search and the usual web sites didn&#x27;t say anything about Migraine relief, but a handful of forum posts from people who take the medication had been taking it to manage Migraine symptoms (a search of that medicine a few weeks ago yielded results indicating that the medicine is now prescribed for that purpose).  These silly little pills that cost about a dollar for a month&#x27;s supply are <i>magic</i> as far as I&#x27;m concerned.  Generally, I <i>hate</i> drugs affect my brain, but I&#x27;ve had no side-effects (unless you consider eliminating Migraine a side-effect).<p>My apologies for the long comment, but since I know there are others out there who probably have gone through what I went through, I thought I&#x27;d share.<p>[0] Here&#x27;s where it gets complicated. The ER couldn&#x27;t figure out <i>why</i> I was sick, but a flush of fluids through my system resolved everything. I was diagnosed as having a psychiatric episode -- something I had <i>never</i> had in the past, nor since.  I was also admitted on a US holiday, so staff wasn&#x27;t so great.  I was prescribed this medication on the assumption that I might need to be on a <i>mood stabiliser</i>, which was <i>absurd</i> to me, but <i>these were doctors</i> and I am not, so I listened blindly.  I had the genetic test months later after my children had been given a similar test and theirs had indicated a problem with triptans and, sure enough, those were my genes.