Migraines: pain, agony, and vomitting!

I've suffered through migraine headaches for most of my teenage and adult life. I had my first one when I was ten and there has not been a calendar year when I haven't had a migraine episode. They are a family trait as much as dark hair and freckles.

For those of you who haven't had a migraine, you could summarize the classical migraine as follows. It begins where you can see everything perfectly except for whatever you are focusing on you know a migraine is coming and you feel frustrated that the rest of your day is ruined. This is the beginning of the vision block stage and there is a small amount of pain on one side of your head. That dot of light then fills your vision as your head begins to pound. Everything is blurred and shaky in front of you and you begin to feel sick to your stomach.

After about a half hour, the vision block goes away, but the headache and nausea accelerates. The headache is constant and is very sensitive to elevation changes of your head, so sitting up or walking up stairs is extraordinarily painful. After 2-3 hours, you throw up and the nausea subsides. While that is not a pleasurable experience, it is a good sign that the migraine has reached its peak intensity and will begin to slowly dissipate. The migraine will take you out of commission for an entire day and it makes me nauseous just describing the migraine process.

Migraines are seriously not cool and they are more or less the only thing that can keep me home from work. I've found the best way to deal with them is to be asleep so I don't feel the discomfort. There are a good number of prescription drugs that try to short circuit the classic migraine that you can talk to your doctor about.

Since a non-trivial portion of the world's population get migraines, there is a comprehensive list of famous migraine sufferers.

Migraines sucks, so go hug a migraine sufferer today!