I have to vent to people that undertand -menstrual migraines
Hi migraine peeps, I truly hope you are having a pain-free evening. I need to yell into the void for a moment and I invite you to use this as an opportunity to vent your own story of annoying realisation.
I have experienced migraines with aura (and occasionally just aura) since I was maybe 10 years old. Pretty infrequently, thankfully. I did, however, experience severe period-associated headaches for many years while on the pill. I took over the counter painkillers containing codeine for them at the time as none of the usual painkillers worked. As they had no aura I always assumed they were just bad "normal" headaches. I didn't know migraines don't always have aura.
So eventually codeine became a prescription-only medicine, and I went to the doctor to ask about alternatives or getting it on prescription as these headaches were often debilitating. She told me I shouldn't be on the pill at all if I had aura. By this point, I had already been on it for about 20 years, and it was keeping some other issues under control. No other doctor before her had been that concerned since my aura migraines were not frequent. There was no suggestion of other alternatives for the headaches or the issues that the pill was controlling. Just no more pill and no pain management.
This triggered a whole heap of bullshit to deal with the other issues and also testing other kinds of contraception which all sucked. Thankfully, after I came off the pill the period headaches were less severe for a few years.
Now they're getting worse again, so I'm researching options. I'm finding out that they are migraines, and there's actually other options I could have tried which the doctor never mentioned. On the plus side I can see triptans are now available over the counter here, which they were not when I was originally having the issue. I'm gonna be pissed if they work and I could have been using them the whole time 🫠