A sudden change in migraine symptoms

[Heley]

Hello all,

In the interests of not panicking I've booked an appointment at the opticians and am seeing the GP tomorrow rather than running screaming to A+E.

I was diagnosed with migraines when I was sixteen- mine were always unusual in the sense that they were bilateral, with aura during but not before and they were relatively infrequent (maybe one per month). I wouldn't feel particularly dizzy but I would feel nauseous and need to lie down.

Since Monday however, I have a constant stabbing pain on the left side of my head. I have also had accompanying dizziness/lightheaded ness, mild nausea, and an aura that seems to last 24/7. I'm sleeping fine and the pain isn't so terrible that I can't function (which leads me to rule out cluster headaches), and it isn't tension as far as I can tell because it doesn't feel like one (the pain comes on really suddenly as opposed to gradually and is not like a tight band across the head).

Should I be worried about this change in symptoms, or does this happen a lot with migraines? Should I be concerned about how it's more or less constant?

I am trying my level best not to panic, have kept busy and even avoided going to an out of hours GP appointment that 111 set up for me so that I could be more 'reasonable' about it.

Thanks for your time and sorry for the 'tl;dr!'

[Tessar]

Hi heley. My partner has suffered with migraines for a long time but over the last 12 months they got more frequent & like you, the symptoms have changed. It seems that migraines can alter in the way they manifest themselves & the frequency can change as well.
My partner started getting really bad dizziness & nausea. Each time this got progressively worse. Eventually this caused sickness too. They became quite debilitating like 3 days of every month being knocked out &'a few days headache before feeling ok again. Plus I had to collect My partner from work one time. She couldn't stop the sickness/nausea & that time we did actually go to the hospital. I think if she hadn't been sick for over 2hrs we wouldn't have gone there at all. I am emetophobic so it was the last place I wanted to be but I was worried enough that she needed to be seen.
the doctor was very dismissive. We waited several hours to be seen & he spent less than 5mins with her & prescribed anti-emetics. That was it. The next day, she saw a doctor at her gp surgery who gave her a proper examination. This made me realise how poor the doctor at the hospital was. We believe he thought she had noro which was rubbish. But there you go. I think this bears out that perhaps visits to the hospital don't always deliver what you hope for. We were genuinely concerned but as it happens a gp was more help.
Since then she has seen a specialist, had an MRI, eye test all that sort of thing. Every test was negative so that was good news.
Luckily my partner keeps a diary of every attack. I don't now if you do that but it helps in working out the triggers and also if there is a pattern to it such as in relation to hormones, cycle etc.
You must be in terrible discomfort & I cant imagine how bad it must be. I wish I knew how to make it better for you. Make sure you do see your doctor as you don't want to be continually troubled by this.
My partner had to do some 'balance exercises' and has been told not to drink alcohol or caffeine. She is doing everything possible to stop the migraines. Oh they put her on Serc 16 as well. So far so good, this combination is keeping severe attacks at bay.
I hope this info is helpful or maybe even reassuring & will be interested to hear how I get on with your gp.

[.Poppy.]

I'm sorry I can't help more, but I do think it's good to see a doctor. I do think that migraines can change up a bit, but there may also be a reason that yours is so persistent -- I should say, a *simple* reason. Maybe you're stressed, or are missing something in your diet, or something else is going on but the list of harmless (easily fixed) things that can cause migraines is pretty lengthy.

I will say I've had migraines since I was 11 years old and have always had a pretty typical range of symptoms. However, a few years back out of the blue I had one with aura (unheard of for me!) preceding it and just a few weeks back I had one that had an extreme aura with blindness -- again, very rare with my migraines -- as well as speech problems and extreme pain that landed me in the hospital. I still don't know exactly what happened and am scheduled for an MRI in a couple of weeks to see if anyone can tell but my doctor didn't seem concerned at all.

Again, for you this may well be an isolated incident that is triggered by something you're just not aware of right now.

[Heley]

Hi heley. My partner has suffered with migraines for a long time but over the last 12 months they got more frequent & like you, the symptoms have changed. It seems that migraines can alter in the way they manifest themselves & the frequency can change as well.
My partner started getting really bad dizziness & nausea. Each time this got progressively worse. Eventually this caused sickness too. They became quite debilitating like 3 days of every month being knocked out &'a few days headache before feeling ok again. Plus I had to collect My partner from work one time. She couldn't stop the sickness/nausea & that time we did actually go to the hospital. I think if she hadn't been sick for over 2hrs we wouldn't have gone there at all. I am emetophobic so it was the last place I wanted to be but I was worried enough that she needed to be seen.
the doctor was very dismissive. We waited several hours to be seen & he spent less than 5mins with her & prescribed anti-emetics. That was it. The next day, she saw a doctor at her gp surgery who gave her a proper examination. This made me realise how poor the doctor at the hospital was. We believe he thought she had noro which was rubbish. But there you go. I think this bears out that perhaps visits to the hospital don't always deliver what you hope for. We were genuinely concerned but as it happens a gp was more help.
Since then she has seen a specialist, had an MRI, eye test all that sort of thing. Every test was negative so that was good news.
Luckily my partner keeps a diary of every attack. I don't now if you do that but it helps in working out the triggers and also if there is a pattern to it such as in relation to hormones, cycle etc.
You must be in terrible discomfort & I cant imagine how bad it must be. I wish I knew how to make it better for you. Make sure you do see your doctor as you don't want to be continually troubled by this.
My partner had to do some 'balance exercises' and has been told not to drink alcohol or caffeine. She is doing everything possible to stop the migraines. Oh they put her on Serc 16 as well. So far so good, this combination is keeping severe attacks at bay.
I hope this info is helpful or maybe even reassuring & will be interested to hear how I get on with your gp.

Thank you so much for your reply! I have started to keep a diary of the attacks in a bid to work out what may have changed the symptoms/frequency...so far I have nothing but hopefully the doctor will be able to shed more light on it tomorrow. I'll update with what they/the optician says! I've written out the changes and how they used to be etc for the doctor to see as I'm 20 and am rarely treated with much seriousness by GPs in particular unless I bring a parent (and at University 160 miles from home that's fairly unlikely to happen).

I do hope your partner has started to feel better again, migraines are absolutely horrible (and having them constantly is no fun I at all). Personally I just can't stand the light headed dizziness (it's happening now and I can barely see the screen). The pain I can more or less cope with if I have painkillers, and the nausea I can usually control (seasoned travel sickness person here :p).

I'm relieved that symptoms can change however, you've made me less worried about aneurysm/brain tumor!

---------- Post added at 21:31 ---------- Previous post was at 21:26 ----------


I'm sorry I can't help more, but I do think it's good to see a doctor. I do think that migraines can change up a bit, but there may also be a reason that yours is so persistent -- I should say, a *simple* reason. Maybe you're stressed, or are missing something in your diet, or something else is going on but the list of harmless (easily fixed) things that can cause migraines is pretty lengthy.

I will say I've had migraines since I was 11 years old and have always had a pretty typical range of symptoms. However, a few years back out of the blue I had one with aura (unheard of for me!) preceding it and just a few weeks back I had one that had an extreme aura with blindness -- again, very rare with my migraines -- as well as speech problems and extreme pain that landed me in the hospital. I still don't know exactly what happened and am scheduled for an MRI in a couple of weeks to see if anyone can tell but my doctor didn't seem concerned at all.

Again, for you this may well be an isolated incident that is triggered by something you're just not aware of right now.

Thank you for this, it's helped to reassure me that it could just be the migraines being spontaneous (oh how kind of them :p). One thing that has happened in the past two weeks is I've traveled very frequently- Durham to Liverpool, Liverpool to Manchester twice, Liverpool to Sheffield and then Sheffield to Durham. I have travel sickness, so perhaps this is interlinked some how and the extra stress of travelling (I get claustrophobic on trains/nervous that something bad will happen). Again thank you for your response, I just realised it could be this because of what you said :').

As I mentioned before I will update tomorrow with what the GP/optician says. I doubt as well that law exams/potential eye strain will have helped. Phew!

I hope your tests go well and that your migraines aren't too severe, they can be so debilitating as I'm sure you know and I wouldn't wish them on anyone.