Migraines headaches : coping with migraine
Once it has started, you can’t stop it. A migraine attack can last from a few hours to four days. It affects 25% of women and 8% of men in the UK.
Andrea Jeffries first began experiencing problems after she left University and started a new job "Every day I had a headache and I was throwing up very badly, but it was a job and I couldn’t be ill, so I had to go in...I didn’t think much of it but they kept coming back and back and eventually I went to my GP"
The painkiller she was given didn’t wok and Andrea "put up with it for almost twenty years." She missed at least two working days a month and used her holiday entitlement rather than take sickies because she was so embarrassed.
She still had no idea it was migraine, "….unless you know about migraine, or have read about it you wouldn’t really know because you don’t associate being sick with headaches and I also felt very shaky and shuddery, I’d lose my balance, I yawned a lot, but I didn’t put the two and two together."
Andrea then signed up for some research at the City of London Migraine Clinic and hasn’t looked back.
She discovered she was suffering with menstrual migraine and now takes Frovatriptan, which means she can manage the condition – she hasn’t had a migraine since.
"I guess I’m now me. I can plan ahead I can do what everyone else does and I’m not waiting for an attack to happen."
