Mine are always light sensitive. I’ve found that wearing dark sunglasses indoors and not going outside during the day or looking at bright clusters of light such as lamps or computers helps to decrease my symptoms when I have a migraine. My headaches can also be sound sensitive. During a light-sensitive headache, my body’s perception of light intensifies. Every thing looks brighter. Outdoor lights become nearly unbearable, and dim indoor lights look normal with dark sunglasses. During a sound-sensitive episode my hearing becomes more acute like what meggygurl was describing. Couple that with my light sensitivity and the pain and normal life becomes difficult to say the least. I have been known to write papers using medicine, coffee, and sunglasses during a migraine even though I have no business looking at a computer screen while migraining.

The thing that helped me the most with decreasing the intensity of my migraines was learning how to control my body through biofeedback/meditation. My migraines are centered around my eyes and then radiate outward through the muscles from my eyes to the back of my head. As long as I catch a migraine early, if I focus on controlling my breathing, relaxing my muscles all over my body, warming my hands and feet, and decreasing the blood flow/pounding sensation around my eyes and forehead with my mind it decreases the intensity of my migraines. I still need medication, and if I don’t medicate or relax early both work much less well.

Since this has become the migraine discussion forum, I have a question. I take Estrostep Fe for debilitating periods. I’ve done so since the 11th grade and am now in grad school. No one ever told me it was a bad idea to mix birth control and migraines. Is there somewhere I can go to get information? If it just increases the risk of stroke, at this point in my life, I need my pills to cope so I’m more than willing to accept that risk for a better quality of life now. Maybe that is being young and shortsighted, but everybody has to die of something. I would gladly trade quality of life for length of life if I had to make the decision.

My migraines are different from my mother’s. I can’t look at any light and often have to throw up whatever is in my stomach, even if I haven’t eaten in 12 hours. For a while, my new GP (also a great doc) would supply me with free samples of triptans like Imitrex or Maxalt (because get this, my insurance wouldn’t cover it unless the doc spoke to them directly. Apparently, a prescription was not enough to communicate the fact that I needed this stuff.) The triptans would work for a while, but I quickly built up a tolerance. Lately, I’ve been taking Excedrin Migraine and have been thankfully successful. It’s really just a massive dose of aspirin, acetominephine, and caffeine. It will kill your pain, but potentially keep you up. It’s a fair trade, though.

I agree, AmandaW, it’s frustrating when someone uses the term migraine for something that 2 advil will kill in 20 minutes. It helps to commiserate, because so often people are unsympathetic to sufferers of chronic pain. As if it’s all in our heads (no pun intended.)

I second the recommendation for caffeine and ibuprofen at the very first twinge. (By the by, any OTC “migraine” medication is painkiller + caffeine; save a few bucks and take the generic with some coffee or soda.) Other things I’ve had success with: an ice pack – the soft gel kind – on the back of the neck, right at the base of the skull. Reach back and feel for the U-shaped dent in the skull where the spine joins it; that’s where you put it. This does little during the day but is an absolute winner when I’m trying to get to sleep with one. For daytime, go the opposite route and try heat. I find draining some tension from my neck and shoulders helps alleviate the symptoms enough to get through the day, so I put a warm compress across my shoulders. My aunt (yeah, they’re genetic) swears by washing your hair — heat + water pressure + fingertip massage.

To date, the only thing I’ve ever found to kill my migraines dead is large doses of caffeine and ibuprofen at the very offset, as soon as I notice an aura developing. If I don’t catch it before my vision is compromised, it’ll cripple me for several hours and linger painfully for a day or two. At that point, nothing helps but heat and pressure on the head (yes, I’m one of the ones that finds heat soothing and cold miserable when faced with a migraine). I will say that they seem to be becoming less severe with age, but they remain a perpetual periodic “pleasure”.

Hmm. That’s an interesting thought. My migraines have become less frequent and severe over the last few years, and I’ve been using a memory foam pillow during this same period for totally unrelated reasons. Mayhaps there’s a connection there for me, as well…

http://www.drugdigest.org/DD/PrintablePages/herbMonograph/0,11475,4093,00.html

I’m not sure if these will help with migraines, but they’ll probably help with the muscle tension, which is a major cause of pain and imbalance for lots of stressed-out women (including me).

Your words about crouching somewhere in a corner alone in school because you were consumed by pain remind me of my pre-birth control days when I got horrible cramps in school. People are just such assholes about women in pain, like it’s a terrible inconvenience, and pain can be so isolating. I used to leave class in high school and lay on the bathroom floor for 20 minutes, waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in, because I hated to go to the nurse and publicly announce I was feeling ill from my period. Once on my period I fainted in the hall and my social studies teacher had to wheel me to the nurse’s in a computer chair. They’re these weird, lonely moments.

Have you read any work by Nancy Mairs? She suffered from multiple sclerosis and was in a wheelchair for some of her life and writes about women/disability/sexuality/depression and how healing it can be just to share stories with others, to know that others are also suffering along with you, in a way, that you’re not alone.