Feeling nauseous and with a terrible pain over the right eye, Marie sat at her desk head in her hands as she struggled to hold back another round of tears. "I just feel so ill," she told her manager who had finally asked her how she felt, since coming into work that morning.

"I'm sorry," she was told. "if you go home again, then it’s not going to look good on your sickness record " With that, the opportunity to tell her employer this was the fourth time this month she had felt so ill passed her by. As she went into the work bathroom to be sick, she started to cry again.

She couldn’t afford to not work and despite taking all the drugs she had bought over the counter at her pharmacy she was still getting these headaches on a regular basis. She was scared to go to her GP- what if it was something very serious?

In the late afternoon after her shift she went home to see her husband and family, hopeful that she would be able to just climb into bed and wake up the next morning feeling better. Of course, she had forgotten that it was her youngest son’s parents evening and her husband, as kind as he was, wanted her to go with him. However that was not possible. Marie crawled into bed for the fourth time that month, feeling so guilty that yet again, her husband after doing a full day at work had once again to look after their three children, feed and get them into bed. As she dozed off with the pain still throbbing in her head, she heard her children say “is mummy in bed again daddy- does that mean we won’t be going on holiday on Saturday?”

Quite simply, insufficient funding received for Migraine Action activity over the last three years has meant that Marie and her family have never heard of Migraine Action and as a result they have not been able to access the help and support we can offer.

 Of course, we are not able to prevent Marie and others being sufferers of migraine but we can help patients with migraine to understand their condition and identify their migraine triggers, support people in getting a proper diagnosis and enable them  to gain control of this crippling condition by gaining access to effective treatment options. These services are all on offer if we can continue to raise the funds we so desperately require.   

I'm asking you, as I'm sure Marie would have asked, if she'd known it was possible to cope on a daily basis with her condition, to donate at least ten to fifteen pounds to help fund our organisation this year. The need is very real as we have to raise over £320,000 per year to operate our current services across the UK. Our telephone helpline costs in excess of £60,000 per year to operate. This is available Monday to Friday and is often people’s first port of call for advice and support.

We need your help because we never want another woman or man in the UK to suffer in silence the way Marie did.

Please give generously because your contribution will indeed make a difference to the many lives of the estimated 8 million migraine sufferers in the UK. Many of the “migraineurs” we are able to speak to cannot afford, in these times of recession, to become members of this amazing organisation and as a result our income is lower than ever. In fact we run out of money perhaps even before September this year and without your continuing financial support we will have to make arrangements either to close or restrict our activity even further.

We want to be able to cover the whole of the UK with our services and spread the word of our work, and we need you and others to help us.

It will only take a minute for you to say yes? Please donate via the link in this page or text ‘MIGR00 £20.00’ to 70070 and help forever the life of the next person who rings in on our helpline or accesses us through our website.