Given I haven't really had much don to me then I haven't felt much like a lab rat to be honest.
The hardest thing when it comes to treating migraines is that everyone's migraines are different and everyone reacts differently to the different treatments there are for migraines.
There are eight different triptans available, which are the drugs which have been created to abort migraine attacks when they start. Each migraineur reacts different to each of these triptans and it's a process of elimination to find one which works for you (though there are the unlucky ones who have tried them all and none of them work for them).
It isn't as simple as trying one with a migraine and if it doesn't abort it, move onto the next though. You have to try each one for a decent period of time, for a good number of migraine attacks, to be able to gauge whether or not it's working for you. And then when I found ones that worked better than the previous ones, but still didn't abort the migraines, I was reluctant to try other ones in case they were worse, I didn't want to suffer more pain than I absolutely had to, but the idea that one of them could actually abort the migraines was such a tantalising prospect I did of course keep trying different ones like a lab rat.
It feels similar with the preventatives as well but with the results of that being even less tangible than with the triptans, gauging whether a decline in migraines is due to a new preventative or an increased dose of a preventative or whether it's because I wasn't trying to do too much at the moment, if work isn't stressful at the moment, if I've been sleeping better, etc etc. All the many things that contribute to my migraine frequency have to try to be seperated to try to gauge how effective a preventative treatment is being. I take so many tablets a day and I am constantly assessing my reaction to everything every single day. Sometimes I wish I was a lab rat and didn't have to try and self-diagnose my treatment all the time, that I could just think about the now and not about the whole, not about the migraines which just seems to consume so much of my thoughts and my life.
June, Migraine and Headache Awareness Month, is dedicated to Unmasking the Mystery of Chronic Headache Disorders. The Migraine and Headache Awareness Month Blog Challenge is issued by FightingHeadacheDisorders.com.
Photo by globalhermit on Flickr
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