Graduate School Update

Hi all,

I wish I could be more active on here but unfortunately grad school has begun and I am just now surfacing for a quick breather and update.

I don't know if anyone on here is an architect, but school is grueling! Late nights, early mornings, constant work, and irregular meal patterns=recipe for M attacks.

All I can say is THANK GOD FOR TRIPTANS. I had a couple crippling M's while in studio or out on field visits and all I wanted to do was to curl into a ball in a cold dark room. I took a triptan, and was able to continue work in studio 30 mins later. Talk about insanity.

I will be seeing a new neurologist here tomorrow. Fingers crossed it all goes well and she has some miraculous suggestions to compensate for my extreme schedule. Prior to this (if you saw my last post) I was all about finding non-medicinal intervention, but right now I'm too busy to even check my email, let alone look into supplements or therapy for M.

Currently I am doing yoga every morning (for posture as well, which I think helps release neck tension), and I also bicycle commute to/from school 3 mi. I take topamax 75/50 preventative which works but isn't foolproof. At the immediate hint of headache pain, I take 400 mg ibuprofen. If I am too late I move to excedrin or a triptan. I also use tiger balm on trigger points (suggestion from CookieMonster).
I have eliminated caffeine and alcohol from my diet, as well as refined/processed foods.

I was hoping acupuncture would help relieve my shoulder pain & migraine situation all at once, but I'll have to wait until my schedule is under control until I try that out.

Just an observation I've made about the triggers--Now that I've eliminated them, I've noticed that I'm extra sensitive when I do have them. (Not caffeine so much--maybe it's something else in tea/coffee triggering, b/c excedrin migraine has caffeine and that works for me). If I have just a SIP of a beer now, I will get an instant headache. Sometimes it goes away, sometimes it doesn't. It used to be that alcohol would sporadically trigger migraines for me, and I eliminated it because I wanted to reduce the frequency altogether.

Just a thought.

I hope you all have pain free days and much more free time than I do!

xox Mel

It sounds as if you are doing all the right things to help yourself and to manage your M in the best possible way. I have also found that eliminating and being quite ruthless about triggers (at least those that can be avoided) really helps me to avoid many unnecesary M attacks. But some triggers (like weather and various fumes and other people's scents etc) cannot be avoided so easily.

I do not find that I become more sensitive to triggers, but in fact over several years some of the "old" triggers no longer bother me as much. I find the worse thing is to combine several at the same time, often by accident. Like bad weather and stress and eating out where I have no control over the food served combine to leave me witth much pain for days.

Your training as an architect sounds very challenging, but what an exciting profession! Sometimes I find that when I work at things that I am truly exited about, I even forget about pain. But of course we cannot sustain such enthusiasm all the time. I just hope that you will be able to find the right combination of treatments to make your study a little easier.
Did you see your neurologist? And what was the outcome?

Thanks for the response.

I did see a neuro, and it was very disappointing. I felt like I knew more than she did about the things I was asking her for advice on, and in the end if she couldn't offer me a new prescription solution for my issue, she really had nothing to say.
She prescribed me a mood medicine. I was very hesitant about this because I had a really bad experience with Cymbalta and am not interested in trying others. She didn't listen to me and prescribed it anyway, insisting there wasn't really another option if I wanted to be "headache free".

I went home and looked up the medicine to check out the side effects, and discovered that it interacts with the Topamax that I am currently taking. I did not fill it at the pharmacy. Needless to say, I will not be seeing her again.
Since I am from Philly, I will be making an appointment with a neuro from the Jefferson Headache Center when I am back for winter break. I will just have to keep looking into other dr's in the area here and maybe an acupuncurist if I can find the time to go.