by Dolores Portalatin

Created on: April 20, 2009   Last Updated: April 21, 2009

I've had severe hemiplegic migraines since the age of 2 years old. These disabling headaches are hereditary in my family, caused by gene mutations that affect the calcium pumps of the nerves. I was unlucky enough to inherit two bad genes instead of just one... It took 14 years for doctors to diagnose me. Before the diagnosis they thought I was having seizures or making things up. I've used hundreds of different drugs in the treatment of this horrible disease, and I think I might be able to give some useful information on the subject of Treximet to migrainers like myself.

First, before you take any migraine medication, make sure you actually suffer from migraines and not another type of headache or a neurological disorder.

If you don't have all or most of these symptoms: nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, a throbbing, disabling headache and repeat attacks with similar symptoms, you don't have migraines.

If the symptoms show up suddenly (as in, not during your childhood or when you hit puberty, the two most common times for them to start) get checked out by a neurologist, because its unlikely that migraines will just show up in a regular person.

If you do have the symptoms of migraine, along with numbness, vertigo, aural symptoms like flickering lights, and ringing in the ears, you could have a more severe from of migraine, or a brain tumor, epilepsy or another neurological disorder. In the case of severe symptoms, make sure to get a diagnosis from a neurologist and make sure you have migraines and nothing more serious.

Even if you are 100% sure you have migraines...GO SEE A NEUROLOGIST! Family doctors don't know how to treat migraines properly and they often just push the newest miracle drug onto their patients, whether that person has migraines or not. Why? New migraine drugs are expensive, and the doctors get paid to promote and prescribe expensive drugs even if its not best for the patient.

Now on to the drug review:

I have to admit, when I first heard about Treximet, I laughed. In 2008 Imitrex's patent ran out, and generic versions of the drug could be made by other companies and sold for $5 a pill. Before 2008, a single 25mg imitrex pill cost $25.

Let's say you have a migraine a week...thats $100 per month. And let's also say that you have to take more than one imitrex pill per migraine (since they only work 50% of the time), that's you going broke. Insurance companies limit the number of imitrex pills you can get per month, and many insurance companies don't

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