I’ve never had a headache that wasn’t agonizing pain. If I don’t take medicine, I get completely dysfunctional, hide in a room with no lights or noise, and stim like crazy until I throw up around ~6 hours into it. About 15 mins after throwing up, the pain subsides, and I get amazing sleep. I have never had a headache that wasn’t like this. The only medicines that work are ibuprofen (so I have that with me literally everywhere I go because these headaches are truly traumatizing) or if they’re really bad and go to the hospital, an injection of an NSAID, benadryl, and diazepam.
Yet, I hear people say they have a headache and are still out about doing things. For example, I specifically remember my middle school bus driver yelling at a student, “Not today, Jiovani! I’ve got a headache!” How in the world was she able to drive a loud school bus in the sun and yell at the same time with a headache??
I’m wondering if this is an autism thing because of the overstimulation and stimming, or if that’s just how I handle the stress of a headache because I’m autistic. Does anyone else have similar experiences or can function with a headache?
When I have a mild headache, usually from a stiff neck, it impacts me like any other mild pain. It is just a source of stress, like children screaming near by or a Light flickering. It lowers my concentration and my mental capacity but unless there are other factors I can still somewhat function at least for a time.
Migraine is something different all together for me typically it starts with flickering in the center of my vision. Usually I recognize it because it gets hard to read text. The flickering then spreads out and slowly moves to my peripheral vision over about 10 to 30 minutes. When it moves out of my field of vision it takes another 10 to 30 minutes until my brain feels like a bucket of snails. I can’t concentrate even on interesting things and even simple thoughts take effort. About a third of the time a really bad headache starts at the same time. The headache usually lasts about 1 to 3 hours but feels like 10. The sluggishness and fuzziness of my brain will slowly fade over the next one to three days.
This seems to be called migraine with aura. Luckily it hits me only about 3-5 times a year.