Update: Success with Maxalt

An update to my journey. I fell skiing this November and had my first one of these "migraine attacks" in 3 years. I recognized the symptom progression right away after the trigger. I immediately had head pressure, dizziness/disequilibrium, and ear pressure/popping.

I drove back to the vacation home where I was staying right away and took Maxalt, which is a migraine abortive that had been prescribed to me years ago. I took the pill exactly 30 minutes after trigger. I didn't expect it to work, but two hours later, I felt fine. The two-day symptom progression that I normally get during these attacks was halted in it's tracks.

I did not expect this to work, only because I've had only a partial response to all of the migraine preventatives that I've tried so far (and they only helped with the pain and not the underlying motion sensitivity). But it is fantastic to know that I have this tool available.

Typically, my sensitivity to motion gets worse and worse over the course of an attack and then takes 6 months to return to baseline (with my "PT" exercises) after the attack is over. I had only a very, very slight regression in motion sensitivity and no other symptoms of the attack after taking the abortive.

Generally, it's important to take the abortives "right away" for them to work, and I've found this to be true. I triggered another attack by pushing my PT exercises too far a week later, and I did not take the Maxalt right away. I explained away my (relatively obvious symptoms) as having really bad motion sickness from a car ride. By the next morning, when I has insane head pressure and finally realized I was having a migraine attack, I took the Maxalt, but it was too late.

I know this won't help everyone, but if there's anyone out there with repeat symptom exacerbation like this that could be attributed to migraine, it's really worth giving migraine treatment a shot. Having this abortive drug in my toolkit is going to be life-changing for me.

Sidenote: I bought an accelerometer that can be stuck to the body with medical adhesive. I plan to collect data from my PT exercises over time to track how much my tolerance for both acceleration and jerk improves with targeted exposure. Will update when I collect enough data for it to mean anything.