You would think, of all places, restaurant people would be MOST understanding about this. I get nauseous, puke, lose my sense of balance, can't stand the heat, can't stand the smells, lose my vision, break out in a cold sweat, get the shakes, can't even drive...but I don't stop, I can't afford to. I never use my migraines as an excuse; they never keep me from working, and for the most part I don't tell anyone when I get them, for fear of being sent home (and losing money).
At the job I currently have, my boss also gets serious migraines - though probably for a different reason, as he has some serious spine damage from a car accident - and we both keep Costco sized bottles of Ibuprofen (my OTC drug of choice, as I don't have health insurance...neither does he) and aspirin around the kitchen...which helps. Sometimes. The amount I take is probably destroying my kidneys...think those small 30-pill bottles in about, say, 24 hours. However, I have held other jobs where the visible symptoms result in verbal abuse bordering on harassment, no matter how many times I explain migraines, how I've had them since I hit puberty, and no matter how much weak OTC aspirin I take, sometimes they just WON'T go away.
Case in point, after working a rapid succession of 16+ hour shifts at a different job (which probably caused the migraine) I was working the last day before my weekend. And I couldn't stop retching. I would say puking, but my stomach was tapped out - I was dizzy, I was nauseous, I couldn't hear a thing over the pounding in my head, and my vision would "white out" when faced with any bright light.
So I was sent home. And then written up.
Why? I had OBVIOUSLY been drinking. Not like I go through large quantities of ibuprofen; it's not as if I've repeatedly explained migraines to my supervisors and my servers. No, migraines don't look like that.
I don't work for them anymore.