Have you ever heard of this medication?
I’d talk to a doc about it. Says for adults but maybe under a doc’s care she could take it.
I had an MRI for auras a while back, no headaches although the neurologist said I can expect them eventually. He suggested a magnesium supplement to ward them off. Might be worth a try, I doubt it would do any harm anyway.
So sorry your young daughter has to go through this! :(
It's what I use but my migraines may not be as painful as your daughter's.
I have major migraines and my new miracle drug is Zomig. It’s changed my life because I now know I can kill my migraine with a zomig and if need be a second one after 2 hours. I don’t know how Zomig relates to someone as young as your daughter though. My only regret is that I didn’t know about it before, I could have saved myself a lot of anguish. That and it’s also pretty expensive. 6 pills cost about 90 bucks.
I’m no doctor but I don’t like the idea of a daily preventative. If Zomig is age-appropriate and approved for someone like your daughter I’d say go with that and have her carry around a couple in her pocket at all times. I know I sound like I work for Zomig but it’s given me the confidence know I can zap the migraine. Before I tried immitrex and sometimes it didn’t work.
A couple of other things...chocolate and coffee are MAJOR migraine triggers and have to be avoided whenever possible.
Migraines are the worst especially when accompanied with aura and nausea.
Ask your doctor about Naprosyn.
You might also ask around for a good acupuncturist. Not as a cure but as a way to lessen the severity of the migraines.
I have had some nasty migraines w/o aura for the past 15 years. My doctor prescribed two different drugs during those years that I refused to take because of their side effects. I usually suffered through the attacks until recently when I decided to take over-the-counter Excedrin for Migraine. THIS IS A MIRACLE DRUG! My pain is COMPLETELY gone within 1/2 hour of taking this stuff. It’s worth a try.
My husband took Fiorinal at the onset. Within a year of treating his original 2-3 times weekly migraines he stopped having them. No idea if he outgrew them (he was in his 30’s) or if the medication “cured” him.
Check into Lyrica, Cymbalta, and Pristiq.
I would stick with Topamax, but gradually cut back on the dosage every week until the side effects are minimal and yet the migraines are under control. When you find a drug that works the next step is adjusting the dosage, which can take time. There may also be an opportunity here for a cocktail approach by using a little of one drug and some of another and using trial and error to find a good combination. All under doctor’s supevision of course.
Many meds list weight gain or weight loss as a side effect, but doesn't necessarily mean that each person will experience that.
I'm going to send you a PM about details, hope it helps.
Go to Google and type in “bubble test migraines”. Read some of the articles that come up. Maybe your daughter would be a candidate for that treatment.
Sorry about your daughter’s suffering.
Considering how often she has the migraines, I hope her neurologist did order an MRI, just to rule out more serious problems, if not, at this point, I would insist on one.
I knew someone, a young adult at the time who was suffering from migraines about as bad as your daughter — she was eating a lot of processed foods with preservatives, on her own she got the idea that there may be a correlation and stopped eating any processed foods for a period of time and her migraines went away completely. Now she can eat processed foods occasionally and she is still migraine free, years later. She did not go on any strict “no sugar, no fat, no this that or the other things” diet, just cut out things like salami, icecream with preservatives, in favor of natural preparations, so it was not hard, just had to watch what she ate.
Some do say that certain food can trigger migraines, or preservatives can build up in the system and cause it. I think it may be worth a try to put her on a preservative-free diet for a month or so, if it’s working, you would start to see the difference. Also make sure she has enough vitamins in her system, especially B and C vitamins, fresh fruit, etc.
I hope you find a cure without the meds.
Also — did you check her vision, if she does’t have 20/20 vision and one of her eyes is more nearsighted and the other is more far sighted, that imbalance can cause migraines as well.
Also talk to your doc about carbamazepine or gabapentin. I’ve used both. Carbamazepine worked great, but I was overdosed the first couple of months and was miserable until I worked out the dosage. However it may not be appropriate for a younger person though if they can’t recognize changes in their own behavior and report these. Gabapentin caused weight gain and constipation, so it was not for me, but I have friends who do really well with it.
My 12 year old son has had migraines for 3 or 4 years now. He takes topamax, and it seems to help. We recently had to up the dosage, as what he was on seemed to quit working until we increased it. He is still on a very small dosage though.
In the meantime, we have done a lot to try to see if we can find a trigger. My husband’s (with aura) were triggered by a change in stress level.... either an increase or decrease. My son’s seem to be tied to chocolate, caffeine or dehydration. It is hard to tell because the chocolate/caffeine deal seems to be about 12-24 hours removed from the headache, and getting him to drink anything at all is like pulling teeth, so he seems to live in a chronic state of dehydration.
The school nurse and I have had a number of long conversations about them. She was recently at a seminar and said if they are not hormonal then they are generally caused by the “3 C’s”.... Chocolate, Caffeine, Cheese.
I finally remembered something else, a natural remedy that worked very well for a friend of mine — I was doubtful, it’s herbs with sublingual delivery, but she swears by it, and since it’s natural, again, it’t unlikely that it’s harmful. She takes it at the very beginning of a migraine, when she feels it coming on. It’s not expensive, you might want to check it out.
It’s GelStat:
http://www.gelstatmigraine.com/products/gelstat-migraine/sublingual-delivery
But he has been putting in long hours recently.
My daughter, age 17, this past fall was tested for migraines.
Her doctor put her on pills that are not preventive, but she takes right when she needs it. She is on Sumatriptan. It has done well for her. She used to get migraines 2 to 3 times a week. Nothing she used would stop them. Since she has been on this medication, she has done much better. Some weeks she doesn’t need it at all. But it did take a short time to learn to time the medication correctly. You have to take it right when you need it. No waiting.
I understand that very few places still carry these tablets, and your doctor may have to do some research on them. There are some strong considerations for using them on a long term basis as a preventive, but as a treatment, it would take an episode that would last two to three hours and make it a fifteen minute ordeal, and when used as a preventative, eliminated the problem for me.
Treatment costs as a preventative is roughly $1.25 per day. Since she's having them so frequently, a small prescription filled from an online supplier (IndianDrugs is the only one I know at this time, I still order a small amount each year to refresh my emergency stock in case my present treatments lapse and I again suffer the migraines) to try it out as a treatment and see if it does have a strong effect on mitigation, and then perhaps trying it as a preventative.
I would NEVER put a young student on Topamax with its serious neuro-intellectual side effects. In fact, I would not put her on ANY of those daily “preventive” drugs! Drugging a young girl cannot be the only solution.
Has she been to a good and new-thinking endocrinologist? Her migraines could very well be from her hormonal changes. I would want her to see an endo who specializes in bio-identical hormone replacement, NOT a conventional endo. I would ask to have her hormones checked at different times of the month / day, I’d want her to have a migraine chart to let the doc know at what times in her cycle she has them or has them the most, and I would want her to have them adjusted in the most natural way possible by only vaginal or topical bio-identical hormones, in order to bypass the digestive system and the liver assault. Rubbing a little estrogen on her skin at some times if the fluctuations of that hormone seems to be causing the migraines is not as harmful to your little girl as going on the oral Pill, with its fake progestin that can have bad effects.
While the doc is figuring all of this out, I would get from your regular doc or anyone a prescription for Frova or another -triptan drug, for her to use at the first onset of a migraine. It’s a rescue drug and it will prevent migraines wonderfully if used at the first sign. She will need to carry this around so get permission so she can do this. The side effects are minimal and will not affect her cognition at all, nor make her sleepy.
I do think that getting her young teen hormones regulated to a nice pattern, with a -triptan drug like Frova always with her for emergencies, she can be migraine-free or close to it with minimal drugging.
Been there, done that.