I get severe migraines, 3-4 times a week. I get diizzy, blurry vision, light sensitiviity, nausea, and extreme throbbing and pressure pain. I describe them very much like Dejibo.....but I have always just considered them migraines....not MS headaches, if fact, I never new there was such a thing. I thought that MS patients just get more migraines.

I take migraine meds, maxalt and/or zomig....and if it is really bad, I will take 4mg of zanaflex with the migraine med and just go to sleep.

Bingo! I went undiagnosed for so long because I just stubbornly kept going to work thinking "Well, it's just migraines, I'm unlucky".

It took much more distinctive symptoms (L'Hermittes Sign, namely) for me to realize "Okay, something's not right..".

I had gone at least 2 years with left side pain under my eye... my short term people at work (disability) figured it was dentistry gone wrong, then went the sinusitis route, etc.

Whodda thunk it would end up being MS?

Hi Karilann,
About my headaches:
I have had headaches upon waking a few times a week. It started in 1994. It goes away after a few hours with caffeine and Aspirin.

Then I can get a migraine that last a few days. That I need a dark room and to lay down for. This is only about twice a year.

Then I get sinus headaches with a cold, like now it lasted 4 days. Nose runs and is bloody way up high in the sinus area. ENT doc did a CT of sinuses and a MRI of the head (not looking for my lesions, just structure) a few years ago.

Normal at the time of course, said I had a deviated septum that's all. Many people have that. My sinuses are my weak spot. Cold weather aggravates them, not hot weather.

My head also gets the pain like Dej and Karilann described. That I believe is the MS headache vs. the other crapola ones. These get worse with relapse, but can be there when they feel like it. I haven't found anything for them.

IVSM if I relapse helps, so maybe inflammation?

If not in a relapse, I normally get this pressure as a fullness all over, tight scalp, vise-like in my whole head and it hurts just to move a few hairs on my head. Back of head hurts at ear level. Perhaps muscle spasms?, I don't know just guessing.

I do believe headaches are common with MS people, some like normal people get, and ones that are related to our MS are different. JMO

I know what helps my headaches/migraines/MS headaches... thankfully it's legal medically in my country, because it's often the only thing that does work.

I am very perplexed....... do Neurologists look at 'MS headaches' as a symptom of MS?
In fact, my migraines is what took me to a neurologist years and years ago, but when I started having other symptoms, numbness, tingling, blurry vision, loss of balance, word-find issues....he just kept telling me it was all migraine related. But when I started to have double vision, I found a new neurologist.

I had NEVER thought of MS as a source of my problems.....but at my FIRST visit, and after a very thorough neuro exam, which showed abnormal reflexes, ataxia, nystagmus, positive babinski, positive hoffmans, positive rombergs, etc.....my Neuro said his gut is telling him MS, but I would need further testing.

So about one month later, after an MRI that showed about 10 lesions, abnormal evoked potential and a visit to opthalmologist; dx: optic neuritis, I was diagnosed. Very quick from what most people have to go through to get a dx.

I said all of that to ask.....Do you think the years of my migraines were actually MS headaches? and again, do neurologists see them as a MS symptom??

I don't think there is a MS headache persay, but I do think that migraines take a part in some Peep's MS. I never had a migraine nor bad headaches, Except with a Sinus infection.

My DD, who was also been DXed with MS in her early 30s, had migraines in her early teens and then had Shingles in her late teens, around the nerves in her back.