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Debilitating Migraines

Coogybear

My darling boy who is 17 and has ASD, Dyslexia and co-occurring learning difficulties has been suffering with Migraines for many years now. In the past year and half they have escalated significantly and I’m at a loss to know how to help him. Currently, he’s averaging 3-4 a week and they are completely debilitating. We’ve eliminated trigger foods like cheese, chocolate, juice, marmite etc and yet he’s still getting them as severely and frequently as before. With the migraines he becomes light sensitive and frequently vomits, rendering any medication he’s taken as useless. He has a reliever and anti-sickness drugs, but these seem less effective as time has gone on. He’s tried preventers, but appears very sensitive to them and even the smallest dose puts him into a deep sleep for days. Osteopathy has helped to some degree and I have taken him during an attack complete with bucket and dark glasses, but this not always convenient as he can and does also suffer attacks in the middle of the night. We’ve just recently started tissue salts again and migraine relieving teas, but with no real impact.

We’ve run a food diary and a headache diary, but nothing we try seems to reduce them. He’s under a neurologist, who has ordered an MRI, but it seems to have taken ages to even get to see someone about his detraining condition and he’s been largely advised to ‘suck it up’. Migraine is in the family, but even at my worst I’ve never been as bad as my son.

My lad is getting more distressed with every episode and now sobs uncontrollably when he gets an attack. As the year has gone on, I can see he's becoming more depressed about the situation. He says he feels lonely, scared and constantly exhausted. His college attendance has been affected greatly, and he’s now considering curtailing his education aspirations for HE, because he cannot function on any manageable level. He’s now been advised to take anti-epileptic drugs, which seems somewhat extreme, as he doesn’t have epilepsy and they do have fairly serious side effects. Today, he's in my bedroom with a bucket having had his forth episode this week. The likelyhood is that he will be out of commision for most of the day and possibly even the weekend.

Despite being a suffer myself I’m struggling to know what to do or where to go to get him help. Does anyone out there have a similar experience? Or does anyone know of something I could try to help him further, even if it’s a natural remedy?

Should I be insisting that this MRI be brought forward or am I being and over concerned mum?

Any advice gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

Yours exasperated

Coogybear.

Parents

  • I didn't think of this earlier, but I've since remembered that I've occasionally listened to some MP3s for relaxation and something called 'autogenic training'.  I got the MP3s from the website of a Dr John McCauley.  The autogenic training page briefly describes autogenic training for inducing relaxation, and includes an audio recording.  The tools and skills section of his site includes some more audio recordings for autogenic training and inducing relaxation.

    While he says it takes weeks to learn, I found I was able to go from a state of agitated anxiety that was nearing panic to a state of deep relaxation with just a single, fully-immersed listen to a suitable recording.  A dark room, earphones and no interruptions are particularly helpful.  While the anxiety would tend to return after a while, the temporary relaxation was very helpful.  After several listens, I was able to start doing a good enough job of inducing deep relaxation myself that I didn't need to listen to the recordings very often.

    I've also found listening to white noise helpful when inducing relaxation.

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  • I didn't think of this earlier, but I've since remembered that I've occasionally listened to some MP3s for relaxation and something called 'autogenic training'.  I got the MP3s from the website of a Dr John McCauley.  The autogenic training page briefly describes autogenic training for inducing relaxation, and includes an audio recording.  The tools and skills section of his site includes some more audio recordings for autogenic training and inducing relaxation.

    While he says it takes weeks to learn, I found I was able to go from a state of agitated anxiety that was nearing panic to a state of deep relaxation with just a single, fully-immersed listen to a suitable recording.  A dark room, earphones and no interruptions are particularly helpful.  While the anxiety would tend to return after a while, the temporary relaxation was very helpful.  After several listens, I was able to start doing a good enough job of inducing deep relaxation myself that I didn't need to listen to the recordings very often.

    I've also found listening to white noise helpful when inducing relaxation.

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