Migraine

Hi all,

My 14 year old daughter has had a couple of migraines in the past but they have lasted only a few hours and she has been able to get rid of them by just sleeping them away.

But for the past week and a half she has quite suddenly been introduced to Mom's world of migraine. She broke my heart the other day when she said "Mom, now I understand". I didn't want her to understand that way!

She had a virus 2 weeks ago and then just as she was recovering from that she got hit with her period and I think it was a combination of the virus and the hormones that triggered it. The first migraine lasted 5 days. It was day 3 before I finally realized what was going on (you would think I would know the signs!) and got her in to the doctor who gave her Imitrex and said to bring her back for a Toradol shot if that didn't work.

The next day we were back for the Toradol. That did seem to break it and she was feeling better for about a day and a half. But then yesterday she got hit with another one and she's home in bed again today.

This is killing me, I feel guilty for passing this on to her and I'm going crazy trying to figure out what to do to help her. The Imitrix doesn't seem to help her any better than it does me. So it looks like we'll be going back to the doctor today.

Okay, so I'm mostly just venting but if anybody has any ideas as to why she would suddenly be having such severe attacks with no prior history of them, please let me know.

Thanks,
Dina

My heart, and my hugs, go out to your daughter.

Now, first off, pep talk for you. You are hereby absolved of all guilt. You can't be guilty if you haven't done anything wrong, and you haven't. It isn't your fault in any way. You didn't "give" your daughter migraines. It's just something that happens if everything happens to line up right, and you don't have control over any of that. You can let that go, okay? Also, don't beat yourself up over not figuring out it was migraine right away. We all "migraine" in different ways, and even when things are similar, there are a whole lot of different possible explanations besides migraine. For all you might've guessed it could've been some lingering thing from the migraine. What you did do is get things checked out thoroughly and get a diagnosis and help. That's all that could possibly be expected of you, and is exactly what you should do. You're one of the heroes of the piece, dearie!

As for the suddenness, it can happen, and there isn't always a discernable "why". I've had migraines for at least twenty years now, but for the first decade or so of that they were so infrequent and much milder than now, so I never even knew. They didn't go daily for me and get diagnosed until nine years ago, when everything escalated with the initial flareup of the thyroid stuff, which we *think* triggered the daily ones in some way. All that is educated, behind the scenes guesswork at best, though, and pretty much that's all anyone can do when patterns shift into overdrive with migraine. You look around and what else was going on that might have triggered it, and you form a theory. It's possible that your daughter's virus and hormonal shifts were enough of a stress on her system to make her more susceptible to other triggers. She could be triggering a little more easily while everything works its way back to normal, and find that it'll quiet back down soon. Or it could end up being a more long-range pattern change. Only time will tell.

All you can do is keep working at getting things treated and looked after, and hope for the best. We'll do that right along with you, too.

Thanks Dragon, that helps.

You're quite welcome! I hope your daughter's doing much better today, and that things are in the process of sorting themselves out. I hope you're feeling better about things, too.

Well, not so much feeling better.

Went back to the walk in clinic today. Ended up with an Rx for Midrin as she seemed to have a combo migraine/tension type headache. She's back in bed now. Hoping a good nights sleep will kick it.

I'm feeling better about the guilt part of things, thanks for the pep talk. But still frustrated and wishing I could do more for her. And my poor husband is now having to deal with the both of us migraining.

I think he just wants to run away right now! Of course he won't, he's trying to support us, but it's still hard for him to know what to do even after all these years of dealing with me. And now to watch his baby girl in pain!

Well, here is hoping that tomorrow is a pain free day for her...

And that things go well for me at the new HA specialist on Friday

Thanks again for helping me regain my perspective.

Well, my daughters migraine finally broke Friday afternoon!

She seems to be doing much better, except that she is trying to catch up on 3 weeks homework from first the virus and then the migraine before school lets out for the summer. Hopefully the added stress won't trigger anything more.

I'm hoping you were right Droolie when you said she just might be triggering more easily while her system works it's way back to normal and that maybe this won't be a long term issue for her like it has been for me.

Thanks for all the good thoughts!

Hi Dina,

How is it going for the both of you?

Hi Nancy,

My daughter has been pain free for about 10 days now. Thank Heavens!

And thanks to a course of steroids I even had a few (nearly) pain free days myself! The first in about a year.

All in all, I couldn't ask for a whole lot more. Well, except for more days like that!

Thanks for asking,
Dina

Good to hear, Dina! Hooray for both of you!

YIPEE!