How Long Does a Migraine Last
How long is a piece of string? I find the answer to that and I still won’t find out the answer to how long one of my migraine attacks last.
Where Am I?
I was hit with a migraine Monday and I still haven’t gotten over it yet. I’m starting to think it’s the same migraine, but it comes and goes in waves. It’s as if I’ve been cast from the good ship Healthy and left to flounder in the Migraine Sea. Some hours the sea is calm and other times I’m bopping on wind-whipped waves. But I’m still stuck in the same sea.
The Phases of a Migraine
I think my migraine attacks come in phases, but they won’t necessarily be the same as yours.
- The Warning Phase: Can last from ten minutes to ten miliseconds. I used to get auras, but rarely get them anymore. Now, I just get a weird pressure in some region of my face and then sounds will suddenly become intolerably loud and light intolerably bright.
- The Migraine Quake Phase: It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It definitely becomes a part of you. For me, this can last anywhere from a half hour to two and a half weeks.
- The Aftermath Phase: This lasts for a couple of days to a week, where I’m still shaking from the initial migraine quake. And I do physically feel shaky, as well as having a dodgy stomach.
- The After Shock Phase: This is when I get another migraine without recovering fromt he previous phase, but this pain isn;t as intense as in Phase Two.
- Nothing Finally Happens Phase: Otherwise known as “healthy”.
Does this also happen to you or do your migraines just hit and run?
November 6th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
[...] Migraines tend to come in stages, and the worst of it is when you can’t tolerate one watt of light, let alone sit down with Stephen King. When you begin to get bored of lying in bed and being miserable, this is a good sign that the worst is over and you can try to do some work. When you do go back to work, try not to read newsprint of anything smaller than that. [...]
January 14th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] had migraines so bad that I had to crawl to get anywhere. At least today I could stand up. But it kept going and going and going. Yes, folks — I had the freakin’ Energizer Bunny of [...]