Prince

I've been suffering from migraines since I was a pre-teen. Used to get them every weekend, typically triggered by the relief of the stress of the week at school. I'm 27 years old now, will be 28 this spring. I don't get migraines as often now, only about once a month, sometimes twice, but they are definitely worse and more immobilizing than when I was a youngster.

I get an aura... Typically it all starts about 1-2 hours before the migraine really hits me. I start with excessive yawning, pain and pressure behind my right eye, feeling like I need to keep my eyes closed. I become more sensitive to light, sound and smell.

Then the actual migraine hits me. Awful headache, typically in the top/front area of my head, perhaps more emphasis on the right side. I get very nauseous, to the point of vomiting, and start sweating quite a lot (cold sweat) and shaking as if I am down with a sudden cold. My right eye waters a lot as well, and my sinuses feel stuffy.

Typically a migraine attack for me lasts anywhere from 5 hours to 50 hours. I have found that if I don't fight the "throwing up", it goes by a lot quicker. If I do fight it and manage not to vomit, the pain can take days to subside. Unfortunately I absolutely hate vomiting (bad, bad experiences) and instinctively try to fight it by taking deep breaths and all that.

My migraines can sometimes be triggered by a neck tension headache, but this is rare. I have no trouble telling my migraines apart from regular headaches, which I get often enough as well, but am not that troubled by.

As for medication... Regular headaches can easily be killed off with a 600 mg dose of ibuprofen. However, this does absolutely nothing for the migraines. No effect whatsoever, not even just towards the pain, nada.

Excedrine Migraine (sp?) has sometimes helped, but often doesn't really work that well (sure isn't doing jack today).

Here's my problem...the reason I am posting this. I am originally from Europe, just moved into the States less than 2 years ago. Back in Europe, Finland to be precise, I was covered by socialized health care, which meant that health care and medication were easily affordable for me. Just to provide a comparison: a doctor's visit was around 10-15 dollars per visit, and you only had to pay it up to three times per a year's period, any visits after the third one in one calendar year were free. Medication was also cheaper to try as the government-provided health insurance often covered up to 30% of the cost of the medicine.

Unfortunately, I never really took advantage of that. I had other concerns at the time, battling with a mild bipolar disorder, and had to eat enough pills as it were. So I never really looked into what options there were for treating my migraines.

Well, my bad. Living in the States, I cannot afford health insurance right now, so that goes to cut down severely on my options. It appears that anything decent that could possibly work on my migraines costs a lot, and if the cost of the medicine in itself doesn't scare me away, the cost of a doc's appointment sure does. How much does a person without insurance have to pay for a visit? I've heard around 80 bucks, is this true?

I don't even know what kind of medicine I should try if I did try something... The last time I checked, most migraine pills come with the side-effect of nausea, which pretty much undoes the whole point for me.

Since I don't suffer from them weekly, I'd prefer something that works on the attack itself, as opposed to preventive medicine.

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions...anything's welcome.

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