It's important to understand that migraine is not "just a bad headache." Migraine is a chronic, recurrent, and often debilitating medical condition⁶ that requires proper diagnosis and treatment. Migraine attacks:

• Are characterized by throbbing pain, ranging from mild to severe, usually felt on one side of the head.⁷
• Last at least four hours, and can last up to 72 hours.⁷
• Affect three times more women than men.¹
• Disrupt family time and cause sufferers to cancel leisure activities.²

In addition:

• About two-thirds of migraineurs experience a "prodrome," or pre-headache phase, a few hours or days before the full onset of an attack.⁶
• Symptoms include fatigue, drowsiness, mood change, food cravings, thirst and extreme sensitivity to light, sound and even certain odors.⁶
• About 20 percent of migraineurs experience the next phase -- the "aura" -- which consists of temporary neurologic disturbances, including blind spots, flashing spots or streams of light, tingling, or weakness in the face and hands and difficulty concentrating.⁶ These symptoms occur 10 to 60 minutes before an attack, but they are not always followed by the onset of headache.⁶
• With the headache comes one or more other symptoms-nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, heightened sensitivity to light and sound, blurred vision, tenderness of the face and scalp and difficulty concentrating.⁶
• As the headache diminishes, about half of migraineurs experience a "postdrome" phase, in which symptoms of fatigue, drowsiness, difficulty concentrating, facial tenderness, or a feeling of general discomfort may remain for one to two days.⁶

Therefore, once an attack occurs, an employee may be unproductive or absent from work for up to several days.⁶ Employees with migraine are also likely to experience "presenteeism," in which they're physically at work, but unable to function.⁸

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