I’d love to write a piece of prose-poetry about migraines, famous sufferers, early diagnoses, traditional cures, but d’you know? – I don’t really want to. I’ve spent too much of my adult life dodging migraines. It is like dodging bullets but you move considerably more slowly.
Triptanes. For me triptanes are where it’s at. They have been life transforming. Yeah, yeah, I know about eating feverfew and not eating chocolate, I know about avoiding triggers, I know about keeping a migraine diary, I know about cold pads and hot pads. So please don’t go there, ok. Really. These are my migraines not your migraines so please back off. (Isn’t that possessive interesting? Do you think I can be bothered to explore that idea right now?)
It would be easier if they started with auras. Oddly, although I sometimes get get visual disturbances in the form of bright zig-zag lines across my vision, they are unconnected with pain or nausea and pass in about 20 minutes or so. They make it impossible to read road-signs or menus or do any work, but they are otherwise pretty and harmless.
The pain is an entirely separate thing and it starts very gently; it strokes me softly above the eyebrow and touches me lightly down one side of my neck, like a nineteenth century despoiler of virgins. And then sounds become too loud, light becomes too bright, and – if I am lucky – I throw up and throw up and throw up. Bile is interesting stuff. No really.
Triptanes, it seems, work on a different model from other anti-migraine medications. They are symptomatic: no pain, no sono- or photophobia, no nausea, but apparently they don’t change the electrical disturbances in the brain which are the true triggers of migraine. In other words, you still have a migraine, you just don’t know you are having one. Which explains why I feel either washed out or knocked sideways afterwards.
Triptanes. Life transforming. Discuss them with your doctor or your pharmacist.
Aphra Behn - danger of eclectic shock 
I’m glad to hear you’ve found something to give you some relief from the 19th century despoiler of virgins that then becomes a punk rock concert on acid — I have a good friend who has migraines and it’s so awful to see her endure them. Triptanes. I’ll be sure to mention them to her.
They’ve been life-transforming, that is all I can say. I now have a sense of control, a feeling that I can retaliate. They don’t always work, and they don’t mix with some other drugs (I had a fearsome time earlier in the year with them) and they are awesomly expensive, but they can transform lives.
Let me know how your friend gets on with them, if her doctor feels that they are appropriate.
AB