I have not had a migraine in over a month

dance dance dance

I've taken loads of abortives and had aura and whatnot but I've had zero 3-day knockout migraines.

Topamax is really working. Yay! Now I'm nervous I'm gonna get a migraine just because I've said this. Dammit.

Fantastic news Living, I am so pleased for you.

I know that feeling, you are almost affraid to break a good spell just by talking about it....
But since your preventat that ive is working so well, let's hope that even if the next h/a does come, it is not going to be very severe.
This is what happened with my migraines, after I started on my prevenative (Gabapentin).

That is such amazing news!

I was pretty satisfied with no migraines in 10 days from Botox, but in more than a MONTH? That's a reality that is hard to even wrap my mind around.

Topomax is one of the only preventatives that I have not yet tried due to fears of cognitive side effects and the nature of my career. Have you noticed anything?

Thanks Mini - yes I am afraid to break the spell! But since the abortives are working so much better now, perhaps it's a good sign...(/ducks head down and hides from lady luck)

Hey Jwar - The side effects go away. It was a Clinical Doctorate student who suggested I try Topamax - so she was managing one of the the most demanding academic courses around whilst suffering migraine and being on Topamax, so it can be done. (not by me cos I'm not smart enough to begin with!) But Topamax is the type of medication you want to start during a vacation from work - probably at least 2 weeks or a month. I find I need to take it at exactly the same time every night to avoid the fluctuations which bring the cognitive side effects. The side effects (apathy, heaviness, cognitive slowing) are unavoidable while the dose titrates up to whatever works - I'm only on 50mg for example. I take it at night so any drowsiness can be slept off.

So for the first week on 25 mg I was a zombie, then that resolved. Then I resisted going up to 50 for a while but since 25 didn't do much I did eventually go up and was a zombie again for several days. I do feel a bit slow on the uptake now but to be honest I always was a bit obtuse - and I'm working with academics in psychology who have years of experience so I think it might be more of a symptom of my environment! So, I can't say honestly that I have any cognitive side effects now. I probably do tend to blame the 'stupamax' for my own limitations quite a bit lol. I should stop doing that.

EDIT: I just remembered - I did wake up with a 3am migraine on Sunday, but the abortives worked. So that still counts as no migraines in my book! Because abortives usually never work for a middle of the night type of migraine that's already set in by the time I wake up.

I'm working on my doctorate as well. I do a lot of drug development research and use mice as test subjects. Even getting to the point of testing on animals was a huge emotional battle for me (and indeed, what started me on the path to chronic migraine because for 12 months I lost so much sleep due to being upset about working with live animals). I hate working on them so much and one of my biggest fears is that I will mess something up during an experiment and then I will have wasted the life of an animal for no reason.

This is pretty much exclusively why I haven't taken Topamax. Another big facet of my life is having to give public presentations to large groups of people pretty regularly, but I can deal with the humiliation of looking stupid. Just not wasting a life... :\

Maybe I will consider it next time I am able to take a couple of weeks off. Your success is very inspirational!!!

Hi Jwar,

I can see why you have held off trying it. With the right sort of planning - i.e. no public speaking engagements for a month or so from the time you start or from the time you titrate up a dose (word finding difficulty is a transient side effect also), you might be able to squeeze in the apathetic zombie time lol. Do you ever get a lull at work? It is a pain in the neck having to deal with the zombification definitely. If it drags out a bit and you have to work through it, could putting in place some manual double checks around your experiments during the time that you're 'under the weather' help you minimise your anxiety about making an error?

There is evidence that pain itself can cause poorer performance on cognitive tests so perhaps it's swings and roundabouts if you're often in migraine pain anyway.

With your pharmaceutical knowledge I'm sure you will be able to work out the best regime if you do choose to try it. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for everyone, and some people simply can not tolerate the side effects for the length of time necessary for them to pass. And of course, some people experience worse side effects than others.

I wish there was a guarantee that a particular drug would work for everyone.