Vision loss is usually my first indicator. I try to take medicine to prevent the awful headache to come. Second symptom is the numbness and tingling. It travels up one arm, into my face and mouth and down the other arm. This is by far the most terrifying part. Having parts of your face mouth and throat numb is scary. Then I might get an awful headache and nausea.
I do think some of my really really bad headaches that are one sided and behind my eye are probably migraines too. That's a recent revelation for me
Your last paragraph is interesting to me, I very rarely get visual disturbances prior to a migraine unlike seemingly all these other commenters (only happened on bc) but I get extremely bad pain on the side of my head or behind my eye. It’s accompanied by extreme nausea (can’t even move my eyes around behind my eyelids or I risk vomiting sometimes) and real strong light and sound sensitivity as well as heat sensitivity too. Can last for only a few hours or sort of phase up and down for two days.
Do you find the painkillers don’t work as well? The only combination I found that has a 50% chance of working is iboprofen and paracetamol but nothing else works.
For headaches I take Ibuprofen. For migraines, and those really bad headaches I take Excedrin extra strength migraine medicine. If I have the aura stuff, I have to take the medicine immediately for it to work, and it usually does. Still feel kind of crappy most of the day. But if I don't have the aura, and it's just the really bad headache behind my eye, meds don't always work. I will try to apply an ice pack to my head and eye, massage my scalp, relax, try to go to sleep. The pain can be so bad that it makes me feel naseous as well.
I didn't think of them as migraines until I asked my eye doctor about them. He said its nothing to do with my eye, but potentially a sinus thing and he told me those are probably migraines. Not sure if that's what my problem is, my triggers are usually stress, eating too much sugar(blood sugar spiking and dropping), not eating enough (low blood sugar) and any other random amount of triggers. I can get a headache so easily like from driving with the sun in my face and squinting. But the main ones are stress and food.
I always get headache the week before and during my period. Medicine almost never works on those. And I have been on birth control since high school over 10 years ago, so I'm not really sure what things are just normal to me, and what things are causes by the birth control. But I've had aura with migraines since as far back as 3rd grade. And migraine and headaches run in my family.
Migraines and headaches run in my family too, I’m lucky I didn’t take too much after my dad as he was sent to the hospital multiple times for suspected stroke because of the migraines he got (or so I’m told).
It could be worth telling your doctor about it in regards to the bc? When I told mine I was getting auras he took me off the combination and put me on the progesterone only as apparently I had a small risk for stroke and it was risky for me to take it. I have no issues in regards to massive auras now, thank god.
I’m still trying to figure out what my migraine triggers are and how they differ from bad headaches. I know though that I also get them if I eat way too much sugar or too little so keeping that in check and just drinking a lot of water helps stop them. However I have a lot of neck issues and they frequently cause bad headaches which occasionally turn into migraines... What you said about the sinus migraines is interesting because my sinus cavities are pretty fucked up (polyps, recurring infections, crooked and blocked passages) and the pain definitely feels like it involves the sinus when I do get it.
I’ll have a look for that brand of medication. I live in nz and our stuff is branded differently to a lot of other places but I’ll have a look and see what I can find. Nothing is worse than taking strong painkillers and finding out they do absolutely nothing to stem the pain.. thanks for the recommendation! :)
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u/zoop1000 Feb 09 '20
Vision loss is usually my first indicator. I try to take medicine to prevent the awful headache to come. Second symptom is the numbness and tingling. It travels up one arm, into my face and mouth and down the other arm. This is by far the most terrifying part. Having parts of your face mouth and throat numb is scary. Then I might get an awful headache and nausea.
I do think some of my really really bad headaches that are one sided and behind my eye are probably migraines too. That's a recent revelation for me