Question
My 18 year old son has a mild Chiari Malformation found on an MRI a few years ago. Since, he has experienced periodic migraines which were intermittent until this year. Now, he wakes up daily usually between 2-4 am, head pounding, often accompanied by vertigo or dizziness, and about 1/2 vision blocked. Recently, more disturbing incidences have been happening. When he wakes up, he's often very thirsty, will drink down several glasses of water, throw up, and sometimes pass out. He does odd things like going outside and standing under the tree and passing out on the ground. One time he sat up a chair part on the edge of the porch,part on the step and then threw himself on the ground. Said he feels like his body is just acting on it's own without his brain thinking about it. One night got up went outside and walked on all fours like our dog. Says he's conscious when it happens, but doesn't think about it until the next day and sometimes he will remember waking up but can't remember blocks of time, say from 3 to 5 am. He also says although his room is dark, he will often wake up and everything looks bright yellow. And he will get what I would call electrical shocks in his brain, sort of like what you would see on a test that measures talking in electrical pulses. They are quick and noisy. Spent a night recently with a friend and said he got up while there and opened a can of spaghettios and poured them on his face. Weird things like that. Didn't want to tell us about these things for quite some time because he thought he was going crazy. I assured him he's not. Recently his neurologist did EEG, but that turned out normal. I think he needs a sleep study. These headaches have increased throughout the year now from 2 or 3 x week to daily. Always they come in his sleep and last until mid to late afternoon. Evenings he's ok. Usually as migraines do, are accompanied by nausea, sometimes vomiting, vertigo, feeling disconnected to parts of his body, sometimes passing out. Started on 25 mg. Topomax at beginning of school year, worked up to 100 mg. and stopped working, so started on Amitriptylene 20 mg. Another weird thing is once while he was driving, he saw a car stopped a ways ahead of him getting ready to turn, but he said no matter how close he got to the car, he felt like he was still far away from it until he was almost on top of it when he realized it. Another time he got up in the night went in the bathroom felt his face was really dry, so splashed water on it and looked in mirror and although he was close to the mirror, it looked far away then his head started to turn sideways on it's own and he passed out. Said sometimes his head will do that like he has no control over it, just start pulling sideways. What could all this possibly be? Any ideas?
Answer
You might want to consult the neurologist as it could be side effects from the amitriptylene, also you might consider a sleep study. but alert your doctor first, sorry i dont have much of an answer.but there definitely is something neurolgoically wrong. Migraines do cause nausea, if the topomax isnt working there are so many others to try try this link, feel free to email again..http://headaches.about.com/od/migraine101/Migraine_101.htm
