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Your Healthy Family: How migraines impact school-aged kids

Posted at 8:25 AM, Dec 23, 2022
and last updated 2022-12-23 08:25:51-05

Migraines are more common than asthma, epilepsy, and diabetes combined. Migraines are more than just a headache. They impact one in seven people worldwide, and a lot of them are school-aged kids.

Emma Peterson is 11 years old. Migraine disease has impacted her life in a big way.

"Ii couldn’t really hang out with anyone because of how bad my migraines were. I had to kind of just lay in my room in darkness," she said.

"It was terrifying. She was so nauseated, and she was seeing all of these strange flashing lights," Emma's mom, Carrie Peterson, said.

She said Emma's symptoms came on suddenly. She had only had one bad headache several years before, so they weren’t sure what was wrong at first.

"We went to a neurologist, we went to the emergency room, and no one could really seem to get her out of this really acute, exceedingly painful state,” Carrie said.

The Henry family understands the pain of migraines quite well.

"There’s a notion that a headache is just a headache, where in reality, migraine is very different than a headache," Elizabeth Henry Weyler said.

Her younger sister Danielle took her own life in 1999 when her symptoms became too unbearable. She was just 17.

"Eventually, her attacks progressed to the point that she was having a migraine attack almost every day. When Danielle had a migraine, she often could not see. People weren’t understanding the severity of it," Henry Weyler said.

Her family created the Danielle Byron Henry Migraine Foundation to help people understand the suffering that can come with getting migraines. They created the program "Migraine at School," based in Utah, which provides migraine resources to parents, teachers, and students.

"We are working with ambassadors. People on the ground to go to their school community to bring the information directly to their school," Henry Weyler said.

She said they've reached 600,00 students in Utah through this program and are now hoping to reach even more across our country so students like Emma know they're not alone, and there is help.