1) anything over the counter (aspirin, ibuprofin, acetomenicin (sp?), etc.) do not touch my pain levels.
2) coffee can lower my pain levels by a small amount, but i am sensitive to caffeine and use it sparingly.
3) i have some (expired) tramadol, which gave me rebound headaches, so i stopped taking it.
4) promethazine used to help a lot, but i think my body got used to it, and now it does nothing.
5) Quarelin (metamizol-sodium, caffeine, drotaverin-hidrochlorid), which is available here, but was taken off the market in most western countries because of a few deaths, does help, but i’m wary of taking it too often or too much. it won’t make it all better, but it can take me down from a 7-8 to a 3-4 on my pain scale. i can function at a 4, but stlil have to be careful. I’m useless at an 8.
6) i think they tried some antidepressants as well as a teenager, since i was depressed in addition to the migraines back then, and some antidepressants have been found to help with migraine. (I am no longer depressed), but they didn’t help (neither with the depression nor with the migraines). 14 different psychiatric medications were tried, most of them were not approved for use in children, all of them caused bad side effects, and i still have facial twitches which started when I was a 12 year old on zoloft. (i am 27 now). this has made me wary of medication, since most meds cause harm even when they do good, but i am willing to try medications with a patient doctor who understands that if there is a rare side effect (lactation, aphasia, sleeping 18 hours a day, extreme paranoia), I will probably get it and deem it worse than the condition it was meant to treat.
i’ve never taken the preventative meds for migraines, just the PRN ones.
My access to medical care is somewhat limited by not having insurance (€25 a month), but I know a doctor who is willing to see me even though I don’t have a health card and who might be willing to help me access medication at health card rates. Deciding whether to see her and take advantage of this is a moral quandary. On the one hand, I believe this to be stealing and I believe stealing to be absolutely wrong by standards I hold myself to. (It is a black and white issue with regard to my own conduct. I admit to grey areas for other people by assuming they are doing the best they can and making their own choices based on their own moral reasoning.) On the other hand, the citizens, of which I am one, who cannot afford to pay €25 a month for healthcare are the ones who need it the most, the ones for whom preventative healthcare would have vast and far reaching effects beyond their (our) class. And perhaps I would be able to pay the €25 a month for healthcare if I were healthier. The doctor would be at risk for helping me and others like me if they were found out, but the chances of their being found out are small, especially since I have no intention of telling someone who it is that is helping me, and it is their decision to help.
I have accepted help in getting Quarelin in this fashion (it is prescription only, but I prefer the other method of accessing it: going to the pharmacies where the employees won’t ask the prescription). But for experimenting with new medications, I would need to make the decision to see a doctor regularly who can evaluate my progress and make adjustments as needed.
On 2: What kind of drugs are we talking about that don’t help? If you haven’t tried triptans, that could be a thing.
drugs that don’t help:
1) anything over the counter (aspirin, ibuprofin, acetomenicin (sp?), etc.) do not touch my pain levels.
2) coffee can lower my pain levels by a small amount, but i am sensitive to caffeine and use it sparingly.
3) i have some (expired) tramadol, which gave me rebound headaches, so i stopped taking it.
4) promethazine used to help a lot, but i think my body got used to it, and now it does nothing.
5) Quarelin (metamizol-sodium, caffeine, drotaverin-hidrochlorid), which is available here, but was taken off the market in most western countries because of a few deaths, does help, but i’m wary of taking it too often or too much. it won’t make it all better, but it can take me down from a 7-8 to a 3-4 on my pain scale. i can function at a 4, but stlil have to be careful. I’m useless at an 8.
6) i think they tried some antidepressants as well as a teenager, since i was depressed in addition to the migraines back then, and some antidepressants have been found to help with migraine. (I am no longer depressed), but they didn’t help (neither with the depression nor with the migraines). 14 different psychiatric medications were tried, most of them were not approved for use in children, all of them caused bad side effects, and i still have facial twitches which started when I was a 12 year old on zoloft. (i am 27 now). this has made me wary of medication, since most meds cause harm even when they do good, but i am willing to try medications with a patient doctor who understands that if there is a rare side effect (lactation, aphasia, sleeping 18 hours a day, extreme paranoia), I will probably get it and deem it worse than the condition it was meant to treat.
i’ve never taken the preventative meds for migraines, just the PRN ones.
My access to medical care is somewhat limited by not having insurance (€25 a month), but I know a doctor who is willing to see me even though I don’t have a health card and who might be willing to help me access medication at health card rates. Deciding whether to see her and take advantage of this is a moral quandary. On the one hand, I believe this to be stealing and I believe stealing to be absolutely wrong by standards I hold myself to. (It is a black and white issue with regard to my own conduct. I admit to grey areas for other people by assuming they are doing the best they can and making their own choices based on their own moral reasoning.) On the other hand, the citizens, of which I am one, who cannot afford to pay €25 a month for healthcare are the ones who need it the most, the ones for whom preventative healthcare would have vast and far reaching effects beyond their (our) class. And perhaps I would be able to pay the €25 a month for healthcare if I were healthier. The doctor would be at risk for helping me and others like me if they were found out, but the chances of their being found out are small, especially since I have no intention of telling someone who it is that is helping me, and it is their decision to help.
I have accepted help in getting Quarelin in this fashion (it is prescription only, but I prefer the other method of accessing it: going to the pharmacies where the employees won’t ask the prescription). But for experimenting with new medications, I would need to make the decision to see a doctor regularly who can evaluate my progress and make adjustments as needed.