Migraine

As some of you may know I'm stuck in a pretty bad migraine cycle right now, and compounding the problem, I'm between doctors.

I called my former neuro today out of desperation. He's a good doctor, who I like a lot, but he basically ran out of ideas so he referred me elsewhere. (That specialist got fired; now I'm waiting on an appointment with a new specialist.)

He suggested that I take Frova twice a day for six days to try to get some relief.

I'm worried about MOH - I tend to be very sensitive to it as it is. Usually three days of Frova taken like this will give me MOH on the fourth day. So I'm wondering if this is worth a try.

I don't have a ton of other options. I do have a call in to the new specialist's office, and will try them again tomorrow, to see if they're willing to help me out. I'm not sure if they will though, since the new guy hasn't seen me yet. They don't keep a cancellation list (I already asked). My appointment is on May 21.

I can also go do an in-office IV infusion with the fired specialist (who doesn't know she's fired), but I doubt this will do much other than decrease my pain a few notches. It seems like they only do one-time IV treatments, and nothing specialized, since they have way more patients than they can handle right now.

Ideas? Thoughts? I know you guys can't give medical advice, but I'd like some feedback. I'm stuck in a hard spot right now for the next month. Have any of you tried something like this with Frova before?

MJ - I can't really chime in on your Frova dilemma.. but I had this thought. As I'm dealing with my own doctor dilemmas, I've been leaning on my PC to meet a lot of my head pain needs. Maybe yours could shed some light, prescribe you something?? Just a thought... from what I've read it doesn't sound like you really want to go the Frova route unless you really really have to. I hope you get some relief soon!!

Not a bad idea, Candace. I think I will call her tomorrow and she if she can help me. She doesn't specialize in headaches by any means but I do like her a lot, and she's been very helpful every time I've seen her. Thanks for the suggestion!

Any luck MJ? I talked to my PC yesterday and had a great appt... I'll outline it more in another post, but I asked him about trying out calcium as a possible HA treatment since I had heard about it being really effective for some people but was hesitant to dive in without a dr's thumb's up. He was very supportive, just gave me some basic guidelines. I appreciate the specialized training of my specialists... but when I'm not able to get to one, or a good one, my PC is really wonderful, highly educated and always willing to explain things--which goes a long way!

Hope you got some helpful answers!

I posted about this a bit in another thread, but I'll update here too.

I called my PCP's office yesterday to see if I could get in to see her, but her office is slammed right now (one of their doctors will be out for all of May) so they couldn't get me in before May 7. The scheduler did email my doc for me, and I got a call back from her within a few hours. She spent almost 10 minutes with me on the phone, answering all of my questions and talking through some options with me. She is awesome!

She suggested I up my dose of Topamax from 75 mg to 100 mg, and split the dose to twice daily (currently I'm taking it all at night), which I started today. She also called in a script of Relpax for me to try as another abortive, since Imitrex and Frova aren't working as well as they used to. She wasn't too confident about trying a steroid pack or anything like that since she doesn't have any experience with it.

I've decided not to try the Frova for the time being, since I was able to get in for an IV treatment at my fired specialist's office. That took the pain level down a great deal. I do have enough Frova stockpiled - and I can always pick up more samples from my neuro's office - if I do decide to go this route.

Thanks for checking in on me! I'll be interested to hear about your visit as well.

Hi MJ

I hope you are feeling better today. I wanted to tell you about a similar treatment that my son had.

In January he had status migraine. Our specialist prescribed prednisone and Amerge for 5 days. My son took a half of a 2.5mg amerge 2X per day for 5 days. I was worried about MOH too, but he didn't have any of that. (He had never used amerge previously.)

The only problems I noticed with the steroid and amerge was lack of sleep. It seemed like one of those meds was making him super tired and one med was keeping him from sleeping. The cycle was broke so it was effective.

My doctor has also told us we can use our zomig more frequently for a few weeks without worry. Luckily, we haven't needed to try that yet.

Take Care
Jean Ann

Jean Ann, thanks for offering your experience on this. I am glad to have this as a back-up option if I need it, since it's still another month before I can get in to see my new specialist. Also glad to hear it worked for Andrew, and now that you mention it, I remember you asking about it.

I'm still feeling pretty decent today - the pain is still pretty low. I'm a little wiped out, but that's to be expected. I'm taking it easy this weekend to hopefully extend the low pain as long as possible. I'm hoping my new specialist will have some new ideas on how to break this migraine cycle.

Thanks again for your input! Hope Andrew is doing well.

MJ- I'm so glad the IV treatment helped so much! Still feeling better?

MJ,

None of the triptans are meant to be used to break a cycle. If a triptan is going to work, it should work with one or two doses. Beyond that the most commonly used choices are ER-type doses of IM or IV pain meds that will let you get into a deep enough stage of sleep for the Migraine to abort on your own or an IV infusion of something that can abort. Has anyone every tried an IV infusion of magnesium sulfate for you? It works wonders for lots of people, and it's very safe.

quote:

Originally posted by MaxJerz:
I posted about this a bit in another thread, but I'll update here too.

I called my PCP's office yesterday to see if I could get in to see her, but her office is slammed right now (one of their doctors will be out for all of May) so they couldn't get me in before May 7. The scheduler did email my doc for me, and I got a call back from her within a few hours. She spent almost 10 minutes with me on the phone, answering all of my questions and talking through some options with me. She is awesome!

She suggested I up my dose of Topamax from 75 mg to 100 mg, and split the dose to twice daily (currently I'm taking it all at night), which I started today. She also called in a script of Relpax for me to try as another abortive, since Imitrex and Frova aren't working as well as they used to. She wasn't too confident about trying a steroid pack or anything like that since she doesn't have any experience with it.

I've decided not to try the Frova for the time being, since I was able to get in for an IV treatment at my fired specialist's office. That took the pain level down a great deal. I do have enough Frova stockpiled - and I can always pick up more samples from my neuro's office - if I do decide to go this route.

Thanks for checking in on me! I'll be interested to hear about your visit as well.

Teri, thanks for your input on this. The *only* attempts at breaking this migraine have been with IV DHE/Toradol plus a med for the nausea (Reglan the first time, and Phenergan and Zofran the second time). Neither infusion broke the migraine. I've since found out that my specialist - whose sorry butt was fired anyway but is now *doubly* fired - didn't consider my migraine to be anything more than a headache, so is unwilling to do anything for me.

I do have an appointment with a new specialist in just under a month, and his name is from the list on our site so I'm feeling more confident about treatment with him.

My last neuro (prior to the fired specialist) was not a headache specialist. He was the one who suggested the course of Frova. I'm very sensitive to MOH so I was reluctant to try it. Frova has become less and less effective for me over the past few months - normally I use Imitrex + ibuprofen - so I only use it as a short-term preventive when I fly. But, now that I've developed new migraine symptoms (left-sided tingling - which was checked out immediately by paramedics and I consulted with the on-call doc at my HA clinic about it) over the past week I'm definitely not trying this Frova thing.

The past few weeks are a bit of a convuluted mess. So, I haven't tried an IV of magnesium sulfate. I haven't tried a course of steriods. There are a lot of things I haven't tried. If things don't work out with this new guy, I'm just going to Dr K.

Just a note to say

Hang in MJ

Thanks, Nancy.