Migraine

Hello all,

I am new here but not with migraines.
I am a 30 y/o female who has had hormonal migraines for about 4 years. In the last year the have increased to 2x per month vs 1x per month.
Each attack was usually 3 days. I used to treat with Excedrin, which never took it all away, but I managed.
I finally took a Frova 2 months ago and it worked. But since then my head pain had changed and I have had and MRI and been to a neurologist.

It's very strange and I am looking for some guidance.

It is near daily head pain, but not all day. It hurts but not severe. It's sharp but not stabbing. It lingers for awhile and is always unilateral, the same side as my migraines. I have no problems with nausea, lights, etc... I have pain sometimes behind my right eye as well and once in awhile at the back of my head toward the top.
Never the neck or shoulders.

I am wondering since the neuro said pain can present in different ways and my MRI is fine, if this is not a "headache" per se but possibly TMJ or something. I do sleep with a device at night that I had my dentist make, awhile back because I thought I was grinding at night, but its doesn't seem to make a difference in the head pain.

It is present at different times of the day as well, not always at the same time.

Any light you can shed to help relieve some anxiety will be much appreciated.

Do we have muscles in our skull that could be "out of whack"?? Or a nerve that is just overly excited?
Had anyone ever had this and it eventually subsided?

I can handle migraines, they eventually go away for me. I can't handle this daily pain and not knowing if it will ever stop or if I will wake up with pain or not.

Thank you all,
Nicole

First off, hello, and welcome to the forum family, Nicole!

Please take a few minutes to visit our Start Folder, where you'll find our policies and the like.

I'm afraid that we couldn't even begin to guess at what kind of pain it is, since we aren't qualified to diagnose. It's possible that it is migraine, particularly if the triptan helped. But it's also possible that it could be something else entirely. Only your doctors can truly establish what it is and where it's coming from.

It's possible for different attacks to have different qualities and presentations of pain. Most of my migraine pain is burning, but occasionally I do get more of a throbbing pain. Migraine patterns can have some amount of variation to them. Over time, working with the doctors, you'll have a better idea of what works best when certain conditions are present with a given migraine. It may be that you find some migraines are trickier than others to tame. For instance, my "wrong-sided" migraines, on the rare occasions that I have them, are notorious for scoffing at anything I throw at them, med-wise. I find with those, all I can do is ice and comfort measures, and ride it out. Migraines on my usual side are generally much more responsive, and easier to squash.

As for the MRI, almost all of the time, migraineur's MRI scans come back clean, so that doesn't necessarily rule out migraine. Sometimes there might be migraine-associated lesions, but much of the time, findings are unremarkable.

As for the muscles, there are muscles across the skull that can help contribute to triggering migraine when they are tight. Much of the time, what happens is that a person gets a tension-type headache that in turn triggers a migraine. Overly excitable nerves can lead to pain, too, or make pain more noticeable. Issues with muscles and nerves in your neck can play a role, too. It's really up to your doctor to help you sort out whether these kinds of things apply to you in your case, though, and help you find a way to work with them in the hopes of improving the migraine situation.