I have often mentioned to those who do not suffer migraines, that I feel hungover following an attack. I’ve not given it much thought, just accepted that it is what it is and I will feel lethargic and washed out for a day or so before I’m fully functioning.
About ten years ago, I suffered an attack while on a motorcycle ride through France. Mrs L called out a local doctor, such was the severity. He gave me an injection – that I now realise was probably a triptan. The next morning, I was out of the pain, but feeling that washed up lethargy with several hundred miles to go. Over the next couple of days, things got worse. I couldn’t eat properly, I felt exceedingly tired and trying to ride a heavy motorcycle with luggage and pillion became increasingly difficult.
We ended up on the A71 heading south. I was so exhausted that I was stopping for a rest at each service area eventually stopping for the night at the Volcanes services and spending the night at the hotel. I was unable to continue and we remained there for two days. A local doctor had me taken to hospital for tests, but they found nothing wrong. Eventually, she arranged with my travel insurance to get me airlifted home. The bike was repatriated.
By the time we arrived home, I was feeling better, eating properly and pretty much my normal self. This was the worst example I have experienced of this particular phenomenon; a migraine postdrome.
Ah yes, that overall feeling of drained wrongness in the body and mind, I know it well. As someone who is having 2-4 migraines a week at the moment, it’s a permanent state except when I’m admiring the rim block. It might interest you to know that the drugs used for prophylaxis (attempting to reduce the number of migraines in someone like me), once you’ve been through the beta blockers and they haven’t worked, are all anti-epileptics of increasing heavy-dutiness. There has been a long-term theory that migraine and epilepsy are related conditions, and, as anyone who’s ever had a grand mal seizure will tell you, the symptoms of the postdrome are remarkably like a more moderate version of being post-seizure.
As a young woman, my Mum suffered from similar migraines to those described by PT. She still does not know why she stopped getting them.
I get stress related headaches which can be pretty severe. I tried all sorts over the years including co-didromol and co-praxomol, which would work the first few times then not work at all.
For the past few years I have taken Boots own brand tension headache pills and a couple of these (sometimes even just one) always work a treat. They get rid of the pain in about an hour, but then make me drowsy, so I try and last out until all driving is done for the day.
I then get a brilliant nights sleep, but do feel a bit washed out the following morning.
Hope this helps someone.
I’ve never had them myself but it really bugs me when people pinch their nose at work and say they have a migraine before asking for a paracetamol.
It’s like those who sneeze and say they have the flu.
I think migraines and the flu are the most common excuse I’ve seen for taking one day off work.
The flu I have suffered from in the past and it meant bed for at least a week. Thankfully I’ve not had it for about ten years.
I assume the post means that you are at present in the grip of postdrome – in which case much heartfelt sympathy.
I agree with you about the triptans – that is why I save them for occasions where the benefits of being instantly pain-free outweigh the fact that I’ll spend the subsequent two days with, as the French say, my nerves outside my skin.
If it helps, my usual remedy of choice is a soluble painkiller combining aspirin,paracetamol and caffeine – a combination which, I discovered in the throes of an attack, cannot be bought over the counter in France (if it could, M le Maire de B—-, I would not have thrown up in your municipal flower bed).
Incidentally, I once had a blistering complaint from the ma-in-law – a complete migraine sceptic – who had run out of paracetamol and helped herself to my emergency triptan stash; ‘Your pills don’t work, my headache didn’t go away at all and I felt ill for ages.’
You hang in there, LR. The sufferings people endure and no one knows about them – it’s jawdropping. And the sideeffects make a person wonder if it’s worth it.
Macheath.
The Boots pills I mentioned in my earlier post contain codeine, paracetamol and caffeine.
Some Boots staff are getting a bit bolshie about flogging pills with codeine in them, so get ’em while you can.
Sorry if I sound like an advert.
I sometimes get migraines that make me physically sick, normally after staring at a computer screen for hours on end. It must be the flickering of the screen.
I am a migraine sufferer though, I haven’t had one in about 6 months (I get them in clusters when they come)
The postdrome, if that’s what it’s called, is just as you say – like a weird , bad hangover. I always figured, that like with alcohol where your brain is “bruising” from dehydration, you’re doing similar short term damage with a migraine. Thus the hangover.
Aside from the usual (dark room, icepack, earplugs), Marijuana is the best solution for both