by Deborah Wirtel

Created on: November 21, 2008

What is your day like?

Picture this - the alarm goes off and you cheerfully rise out of bed, stretch and smile as your start your day. You enjoy a delicious breakfast with your family and then you're off to work or off to start your day of carpooling and errands.

Throughout the day you happily greet friends and co-workers as you go about your business. Evening comes and with it the joy of knowing you've had another busy and productive day. You think over your accomplishments with pride, glad in the knowledge that you have the ability to do what you want and that life is good.

Now, picture this.

The alarm starts buzzing and, with your head pounding, you slam off the alarm. You can't believe it's morning already and it's time to face another day. Thoughts of breakfast fly out the window as your stomach rolls with waves of nausea. Your spouse and kids seem unusually loud this morning, causing piercing pain to radiate through your skull.

Work is something to put up with; there is certainly no joy in your accomplishments. You avoid co-workers as they usually talk in shrill voices or are drenched in perfume or cologne, all of which will exacerbate your pain and nausea.

And it's hard to avoid the carpool as the kids need to get to school, but you put off the errands - again - in order to lie down in a dark room and seek some relief from the knife in your head. No matter that you're out of milk and bread and the dog is looking a little thin - all you seek is relief from the monster living in your head.

The second scenario is very familiar to migraineurs - people who suffer from migraine attacks.

Lyn, Anne and Jim are migraineurs. Lyn is a busy career woman who travels frequently for her job. Anne is a stay at home mother with two children and a busy household. Jim is unusual in the fact that men make up a small percentage of those with migraine disease but he suffers from attacks many times a week. Each must cope with their migraine attacks and have found ways to get through each day, each week and each month, year by year.

"A 'typical' migraine day usually begins around 9 a.m. or 4 p.m.," says Lyn. She doesn't understand the timing but those are her "peak times" for "head bangers." Her morning migraines find her at work so she must deal with fluorescent lighting in her cubical office. "Due to my overall light sensitivity, I already have the overhead lights in my cubicle extinguished," Lyn explains, "so I will retreat to my sunglasses." Lyn also has to deal with noise in her

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