Symptoms and how I feel

Lots of people have asked how I feel with a migraine when it attacks and afterwards. I will try and explain in this post.

A migraine can happen at any time, any place. If it happens during the daytime I often get warning symptoms, this is commonly called "pre-migraine".  I get what is known as Aura, I see colours around people and objects then comes a mild form of colour synesthesia. I see sound as colour. Next come the hallucinations, I get both auditory (hearing) and visual (sight) hallucinations. Then the migraine attack starts, my head all of my head feels like it is in a vice. That is slowly being squeezed until I can't handle the pain anymore then it squeezes some more. Also I feel like there are screws being twisted into my head.

Then we come to my eyes, my eyes feel like they are on fire, like they are being burned from the inside.

If I can go to sleep with it, I'm okay, sleep it off for a few hours when I wake up, migraine gone but still have post-migraine. This is often called the "hangover stage" because it feels like you have a hangover.

If it happens in the middle of the night, it is a different story, if I wake up with it, that's me for the rest of the day. When I eventually get back to sleep in the morning, it is usually due to exhaustion. Then when I wake up in the afternoon I have post migraine but the migraine headache is gone.

The colour synesthesia and the auditory and visual hallucinations do progressively get worse.

I also get very disturbing migraine dreams. These are scary and often seem so real that I am left shaken when I wake up.

Recent events

In October 2012 the migraine monster came back and it seemed like he had friends with him. I was getting them daily.  After seeing the doctor and he had exhausted his drug options, I was referred to a neuro (neurologist). After an appointment with them, they eased away for a few days but then came back after weeks of changing doctors I finally got another appointment with him.

He classed them as Refractory Chronic Migraines.

I was given a high dose of Epilim and then at a different time Topiramate or Topamax as it is sometimes known as.

When the drugs didn't work and he had exhausted all drug routes I was given Nerve Blocks in the Optical Nerve.  Two sessions of this didn't work. Next step Botox.

I had my first session of Botox back in March 2013. It made some difference, then I had another session 3 months later. Last session was in September, neuro was happy with my progress.

Since then I have had a bad spell of cluster chronic migraines.

It's just a glitch, I have to think positive that it will get better.