A few months ago, Penelope Birckhead was in her office at the University of Maryland Medical Center when she felt a migraine coming on. She went to the ladies room and splashed cold water on her face. She tried to pull herself together, but the pain only got worse. "Reading intensified the pain, the phone ringing intensified the pain," recalled Birckhead, an administrative assistant in the neurology department at the medical center. "[I] just wanted to crawl in a dark corner. So I had to leave."
Her reason for heading home from work early is not uncommon. Medical experts say migraines are a major cause of workplace absenteeism. They are also a significant problem for those who stay at work during a migraine, suffering at their desks in silence.
With symptoms such as nausea and lack of energy, medical experts say, working with a migraine often can affect an employee's productivity.
Migraines are disabling headaches, but they are often accompanied by a host of other symptoms. They can affect a person's concentration, energy level and mood, and can create added sensitivity to light and noise, said Dr. Roger Cady, founder of the Headache Care Center in Springfield, Mo. They also can cause vomiting and diarrhea, experts said.
"Other than the flu, it's right up there as a cause of work absenteeism," Cady said.
Cindy Gates, a clinical consultant for Aon Consulting in Baltimore, said migraines increasingly are being recognized as an issue for employers. Dealing with migraines in the workplace is in the same category as pain management for problems like arthritis and back pain, she said. "More and more, there's a recognition that migraines fall into that area of pain for employers," she said.
Nearly 30 million Americans are estimated to suffer from migraines - the National Headache Foundation estimates nearly 10 percent of Marylanders get them. Migraines are three times more common in women than men and are most prevalent for people between the ages of 25 and 45 - important years for people's productivity at work and at home, Cady said.
People who come to work during a migraine don't perform at their peak, according to experts. Some don't work as fast and may make mistakes they wouldn't otherwise make, medical experts said.
Birckhead, the administrative assistant from the University of Maryland Medical Center, has tried to work through migraines, only to find herself snapping at co-workers and missing details on a project.
