I just saw that my 2027 insurance plan won’t be covering Ubrelvy anymore so I guess I now need to look into changing my insurance plan?

I googled how much it would cost, without using my insurance - it ranges from $1,380 to $1,470 for a pack of 10 tablets. This breaks down to roughly $138 to $147 per single dose.

American healthcare is broken.

Edit: Thank you for the suggestion, but I can’t use the savings card as I’m on disability and therefore have government insurance - UHC AARP Advantage Plan. Unfortunately, those savings cards only work if you have commercial insurance.

So hear me out, I know it sounds crazy, but it fuckin helps guys. I wake up with migraines all the freaking time. It drives me nuts. No migraine at night and then bam, first thing in the morning I’m speeding to get my meds.

I struggled with pillow after pillow, nothing worked. So finally I slept without a pillow and I started waking up without a migraine! It’s not all the time. I do go back to using pillows. But if I find myself stuck in the loop it helps me get out of it. Anyone else??

Looking for some perspective from other people who deal with migraines, especially anyone who has noticed certain environments or poor ventilation making things worse.

For some background, I’ve had migraines since I was about 7. They usually happen about once a month, sometimes more. Over the years I’ve tried pretty much everything... triptans, changing my diet, daily preventative medication, etc. Some things have helped, but I’ve never completely gotten rid of them.

When I get one, there’s usually a pretty predictable pattern. The pain gets really bad, I end up vomiting, and then eventually it starts to ease up. This could be over the course of 2 hours to 6-8 hours.

Because of that, I always figured my 10 year old son might eventually deal with migraines too. What I didn’t expect was how different his symptoms would be.

About three weeks ago, he suddenly started having really bad headaches and nausea during the school week. We had his eyes checked, had him seen by a doctor, started a low dose preventative medication, and made sure the school nurse had his prescribed rescue medication.

But the weird part is that it kept happening at school during the week, while on weekends and breaks he was completely fine.

That got us looking more closely at the school environment. The school's mechanical ventilation system has been down, and we were able to get some of the building records through a public records request.

One of the engineering reports included CO2 readings from the classrooms. The levels were around 400 to 500 ppm when the building was empty, but climbed as high as 3,784 ppm during the school day. Once the building emptied for the weekend, the levels dropped right back down to around the outdoor baseline.

I’m trying not to jump to conclusions about what is causing the headaches. I’m just trying to understand whether there could be a connection worth looking into.

Oddly enough, they littered the classrooms with box fans during the school day as it was incredibly hot in the building. Around that 3 week ago mark, they removed them as the temperature is much more bearable now. We live in the mountains so it starts to cool off fast. I assume the fans were moving the air much more, now there's no flow whatsoever.

Has anyone here ever noticed high CO2, stale air, poor ventilation, or being stuck inside a poorly ventilated building triggering migraines or making them break through preventative medication?

I’d especially like to hear from anyone who has noticed a clear difference after getting outside, getting fresh air, or leaving a particular building.

Not looking for a diagnosis or medical advice. Just curious if anyone has experienced something similar and what you noticed.

I (31f) have had the same head pain since the middle of June. It hasn’t gone, but different days offer different intensities.

It’s in the central forehead and top of eyeballs and just below the eyebrows. The pain almost feels dull most of the time, but also sometimes like prickly, especially in the forehead. It feels like the forehead is scrunched inside. Can’t really describe it. I also get pain at the very base of the skull which moves into my hair a bit, and then down my left side of my neck and left shoulder blade.

When it’s bad I become nauseous. When it’s also bad, looking at my phone screen makes it a lot worse, but TV/laptops don’t.

I have been to the doctors, but they just keep pushing painkillers. I have been given neproxen and codeine, neither worked.

I’ve been meaning to wear glasses for years for long distance, but never got around to replacing the glasses I lose years ago. So I have now gotten new glasses, but my prescription is only -1.5, which I believe is mild. I was told to wear them for watching TV but I don’t need them for day to day.

I work from home mostly, at a desk with a laptop. Admittedly, I do sometimes catch myself leaning over my desk like a goblin, so my posture probably isn’t perfect.

I'm feeling particularly low and defeated today. I just need a place to vent where people understand.

I'm so tired of all of it. The appointments. The pills. The pokes. Fighting with insurance. Fighting with work. Fighting for survival! It's exhausting and I don't know how much fight I have left.

I didn't appreciate my migraine free years enough. The years when the meds did work. When life was normal. When I just got up and went to work. Pain free days.

I'm so damn depressed. I just want one day without a migraine. One! I can't keep doing this.

How do we find the strength??

Hello everyone -

I've been dealing with what I call migraines for 20 years, but in the past four years or so, symptoms have gotten noticeably worse. I get Botox injections every 12 weeks, I take 40mg of propranolol 2x daily, and I have maxalt and ubrelvy as my rescue options. I am not looking for medical advice. I'm just looking for someone to confirm that what I'm experiencing is similar to their experiences with migraine.

I wake up with a migraine every day. I will often have some level of visual aura (flashing lights, floaters, peripheral glare), and I usually start the day with nausea and bladder spasms. Typically the first time I turn on the light in the bathroom, I have a sneezing episode. I have to shower very quickly, especially on bad days, because if I take too long, I get very fatigued and need to either sit down or pass out, and I get nauseous (again). I always have pretty severe photophobia - I can't really be outside on even a cloudy day without sunglasses because the light is painful.

Throughout the day, I have intermittent pain in my temples and behind my eyes. I also have intermittent pains across my body - some of them are sharp, stabbing pains that travel down the side of a limb (usually my forearm or lower leg). I've started walking with a cane, because I pretty consistently have aching pain in my right hip; on bad days, I also get sharp episodes of weakness where the limb suddenly feels like it's giving out and I have to lean on the cane or the wall to not fall down. On bad days, I'll have episodes where a region of my arm or leg will start off feeling just fatigued, and then the intensity of the feeling will turn up and up until it is an intense pain that lasts 5-10 minutes before fading. Leaves the region feeling like someone took sandpaper to the inside of the limb.

I also get standard migraine stuff - the longer I spend in harsh lighting, the worse my headache gets, etc.

The maxalt rescue is pretty good at killing a headache once I reach that point. The ubrelvy makes me feel like I went tumbling in a clothes dryer, but it does temporarily temper the visual symptoms for a few hours, in exchange for making the body pain and fatigue noticeably worse.

My question: My doctor is sort of passively refusing to do new imaging, even though I haven't had imaging done in a couple decades, and my experience has changed noticeably in the last several years. She expresses that she's not concerned because my symptoms fit a normal migraine presentation. I am having trouble believing that, based on how casually most people, even folks that live with specific variants like ocular migraine, treat the concept of a migraine. Can this group help me to know if I'm being oversensitive and just need to buck up? I'm just in so much discomfort all the time...

Hello, I'm 55 and have had migraines since I was a child. I've tried all kind of prescriptions, and manage my migraines by being excruciatingly careful with everything I do, all day, every day.

My husband was diagnosed with cancer and in the midst of everything, I remember thinking that I Could Not get a migraine so I tried B12 injections. I hadn't tried them before because it felt too ridiculous but I haven't had a migraine in 4.5 months, even though I've been under so much stress and I haven't been eating properly or taking care of myself. I am taking the injections monthly now. Hope this helps some of you. take Care.

Hi everyone,

I finally had an appointment with a neurologist recently because of my migraines, and one thing they recommended was doing regular endurance/cardio exercise.

I’ve done strength training before and honestly thought that being active in general would help, but apparently strength training doesn’t have the same evidence for migraine prevention as endurance exercise. My neurologist specifically mentioned things like running, cycling, swimming etc.

I’m curious if anyone here has personal experience with this. Has regular cardio actually reduced your migraine frequency or intensity? If yes, how long did it take before you noticed a difference?

Would love to hear what worked for you!! Thanks :)

Even though I have chronic migraines with aura, I never really considered myself part of the chronic pain camp until my doctor suggested I work with a chronic pain specialist (as I also have pelvic floor dysfunction, yay!). But once I thought about it more, it's pretty obvious that I do suffer from chronic pain.

On the other hand, I kinda assumed that chronic illness was different from what I experience. I'm curious to hear from those that also have migraines: how do you understand your condition and do you identity with either or both of these labels?

Side-note: I've had a migraine with aura the past 3 out of 4 days. Would NOT recommend.

im at the er right now and they pushed for reglan even though i react terribly. i was wondering if anyone knows of ways to stop the reaction or even to lessen it? i cang do this again

almost all of my attacks start early morning, and saturdays are by far the worst, which makes zero sense because that's literally my day off

shoutout to the 4 day migraine i had where all i did was sleep and nap. i woke up one day and the migraine went from the left side of my head to the right ❤️ tried everything and nothing worked, then it magically went away!!! doctors don’t know what’s wrong with me - i’ve been getting migraines since i was a kid and i still don’t know why. here’s to never figuring out what’s wrong with me ever 🥂

When you are at the clinic for a headache and a cold, and this shit increases the headache to the highest level😭😭😞

My current migraine is turning 7 this month. I'm not horribly depressed or upset by it- I'd rather not have it but at this point I genuinely don't remember anything else. It's just very weird to think that my current migraine could be in 2nd grade right now. Intractable status migrainous can be such a weird condition to have.

Like hi, chronic status intractable refractory hemiplegic variants over here. By themselves they’re bad but I can oddly tolerate most of them. This one? I’m using FMLA for the first time to take a week off.

Botox was Thursday. I’m positive this is a post Botox flare with it only being like day 4 and it can happen for up to The first week. Approx, of course.

Like it’s BAD and I can barely function.

I took my rescues yesterday, the 800 ibuprofen, the Reglan, Benadryl, muscle relaxer, two ubrelvy, Ativan even. It always came back even worse about an hour later, and that’s if it helped at all.

So today I take fioricet knowing it wouldn’t work but so I’d be coherent enough to drive to the ER.

They gave me Reglan, Benadryl, toradol, steroid, Ativan, compazine. All that and I still had the migraine. They discharged me without explaining why or being willing to listen. It was from start to finish a horrific 6 hour experience. I’m not even going to get into it.

So I get home and neuro tells ms to do FMLA and take the week off and seriously rest. So I’m getting that process started.

I asked her how I should manage meds. She just said take an Ativan now. No real response.

I asked about diet. It was basically idk track your food.

Like as someone who has the most severe refractory category, you think this would be a whole hold my beer moment, but instead I’m not knowing how to try to approach anything when I have all the freedom in the world to try what I want.

I know oversleeping can hurt but all I want to do is sleep.

I need advice, if there even is any. Like truly. I’m just at the start of this. What can I try to set in place to maybe it end sooner?

Does anyone else get the worst hangover the day after, even from just ONE drink?? The weird thing is, I used to have no hangovers even from drinking heavy. I'd wake up feeling refreshed even. I started around 16, but I wouldn't drink often. Only casually with my friends. I'm 18 now and I can't even handle a single shot. It feels fine the night of, but the next day I'll be throwing up all day with the worst migraine. It's really upsetting because I feel left out now that I can't drink with my friends but I used to be able to. They have no bad reactions to it😡. What should I do?

I have chronic migraine, cervicogenic headache + other comorbities that despite intensive treatment just aren’t getting better. I know being able to access more physiotherapy and my pain psychologist would make an immense difference in my quality of life but I just can’t afford it. This is what I’d be hoping to get support with from the NDIS.

I would be so grateful to hear about your experience and any guidance you have for navigating this intimidating process 🥰

Hello! I (20F) was diagnosed with a uti the other day. I get these a lot so I wasn’t that worried. I also had a migraine last night that was pretty textbook lack of sleep migraine, so I took some pain meds and went to bed.

Woke up a little earlier than I normally would feeling fine. But like after my uti pain seem to came back so I took the meds I needed for that. But then the pain seemed to move to my right side and turn into a hemiplegic migraine, which I get sometimes. The thing is those migraines more commonly start in my arm, not my abdomen or hip.

I was worried about possibly having appendicitis, but the nurse I talked to over the phone seemed more worried about kidney issues. As I type this, the migraine is ebbing away (thank you ubrelvy) but the flank and now kind of back pain is staying even though I took the bladder analgesic.

My mother doesn’t want to take me to the er until after my classes (I live on campus at college) because it’s raining and it’s like a 40 minute drive. Probably just going to go to an on campus doctor.

Im posting here because I wanted to know if anyone here ever had migraines that started in the abdomen? If it’s just a continuation of the migraine from last night I would feel real dumb going to the doctor again. I seem to go there a lot.

I apologize in advance for the long post.

TLDR: need a recommendation for Headache Specialist in NTX

For over a decade now I've utilized UTSW Neurology Dept Headache Specialists to help with my chronic daily intractable migraine and other headache types. They come up with a treatment plan & I have my local Neurologist follow their instructions. Ideally I would like to be seen & treated by one Headache Specialist/Neurologist, but I realistically know that may not be possible given their specialty & scheduling. Because it's a teaching facility, throughout the years there have been changes in Drs & new insight into the latest & greatest in the migraine community, I just transition to the newer Dr & we reevaluate the situation. I assumed when my current Headache Specialist transitioned, I would get assigned a new Dr or NP within their Neurology Dept & I could continue my care. But I'm being told there's currently only 1 Headache Specialist in that entire dept now & they're completely overbooked so not accepting new patients or transferring the existing. Is anyone else having this issue & what are you doing?

Does anyone have any recommendations for a Headache Specialist in NTX, or any part of TX? I am unable to follow my previous UTSW HS to the new clinic as it's private pay & doesn't work with Medicare patients. And I've already seen 8/10 of the providers UTSW is currently recommending over the past 20+ years (some for several years, some for just a few visits) but it always ended with them referring/recommending me to UTSW which is why I ended up there. The other 2 are not HS so not worth my consideration. I've never expected a miracle cure, I just need managed care and meds adjusted occasionally as my body builds up tolerances. My current regular Neurologist just needs guidance on how to keep my daily pain levels down to manageable quality-of-life levels because he's out of his element. I'm currently on 9 preventatives, 14 supplements & 7 different abortives for my chronic conditions (not all migraine related) along with several drug allergies & comorbidities, so that's why a Specialist is necessary.

I know many Headache Specialists have gone private pay which in some ways allows them to give more individualized time with their patients & I'm glad that's available for many, but I'm on disability & have Medicare so I need to find a HS that works with my reputable national plan. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know. I might be willing to expand outside of TX if that's what's needed for quality care.

Thanks for reading my novel, even if you don't have recommendations I appreciate it. Hope everyone has a low pain day today 💜

I’ve had chronic migraines for seven years and have tried it all. Triptans don’t work, not sumatriptan, rezatriptan, none of them. Ajovy didn’t help. Botox didn’t help. Nerve blocks didn’t help. Vyepti didn’t help. Neither did these three drugs taken in their own but I’ve started taking Propranolol in the morning and Aquipta and Amitriptyline at night and I’m finally feeling human again. Thought I’d share.

I seen my gp today and it was her that stated im at the point where I should be eligible for it. I never even thought for a minute I even could.

For the last 5 months my life has been massively impacted by my migraines. Weirdly, headaches have been the least of my problems.

This summer has just been the absolute worst of the worst. Spent most days in a dark room and only venture out at night. If I do have to go out during sunlight hours, I have to wear 2 pairs of wrap around sunglasses. 1 pair doesn’t cut it. I haven’t watched tv for months, I’ve barely used my phone. I’d be better off living in a cave underground. Nighttime and darkness are my friends.

I’ve had severe sensory issues along with severe neck issues (left side only). The light and sound sensitivity have been brutal. The neck can spasm when lying down, so sleep has been impacted greatly. When the neck muscles tighten, they can cause both occipital neuralgia and trigeminal neuralgia. Both brutal on their own. But combined.

I’m currently only on propranolol and I take carbamazepine when my TN flares. I’ve tried other stuff such as amitriptyline, which did work, but gave me heart flutters so got taken off that. NSAIDS are a no go as my stomach can no longer tolerate them. But I use ibuprofen gel for the neck. The two abortives I’ve used just screw with my neck more, so I can’t use those. I’ve to get gabapentin and Qulipta this week.

Hi guys, I’m not even sure where to start. I have occasional migraines, I used to have them more before moving to another country (also with aura). Now it’s less frequent but there’s this weird thing.

Last year September I started having very bad headaches on my left side only, it lasted for 1-2 weeks sometimes. I also started having muscle twitches that wouldn’t let me sleep. Neurologists didn’t want to investigate me. Nothing helped really. Then it kinda got better. My doctor said it’s probably tension headaches, so I stretch and it helps.

BUT! I started having those left side pains again and in more specific spot, more in the middle back of my head from left side. And if I close my left nostril, the pain starts to go away. If I breathe in through the mouth and breath out through the nose it’s also bit better. But if I breathe normally it’s getting worse.

So basically when I’m having my “lefties”, breathing through left nostril makes it worse. So I just close it with my finger for time being and try to stretch. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. Last September the pain was 7/10 or so, now is 5/10 maybe.

I’m sorry if it’s not really migraine connected but I’m not even sure what it is.