This Bendigo mum says she lives half of every month with migraine

From there it can be just 15 minutes before Bendigo's Kathryn Stanislawski is engulfed in pain, the result of a severe migraine.

While driving, while asleep - it doesn't matter.

That intense pain is what Ms Stanislawski describes as "torture" and it can last for days.

The mother-of-three said she never used to experience migraines with this severity and initially attributed the rise in episodes to a "change of life" as she became older.

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As the migraines became more frequent, the symptoms leading up to their onset were "predictable".

But now, a migraine can hit at any time and there is no telling how long the cycle will last.

"I certainly have never had migraines in younger life," Ms Stanislawski said.

"They have only started in the last four to five years.

"I am 45 so, coming into those perimenopausal-kind-of-years, it was a bit of a cyclic kind of thing (to get migraines).

"Then they got progressively worse."

Ms Stanislawski said there were a lot of days in a month where the migraine pain would see her "taken out".

She said the migraines had affected her relationships with her children, her partner and her work.

There were times when even with the searing pain, Ms Stanislawski still had to look after her children.

It led to a poor quality of life.

And she is not alone in her suffering.

A new survey by global health care company Organon found the majority of women aged between 21 and 50 who live with migraines would be in pain for up to eight hours.

The survey also found 80 per cent of women living with migraines feel unsatisfied with how they manage the symptoms, while 70 per cent of these women say they can't stop a migraine attack from occurring.

The women in the survey also cited lighting and the loud conversation style of the office as common triggers in the workplace.

In trying to find a solution to the problem, Ms Stanislawski spoke about her frustration at "no-quick-fix" for the migraine pain.

She said there was a 'trial and error' approach to what medication and what preventers to use that suited her while going back and forth between visits to the GP.

"There is not a quick fix you know," she said.

"Everyone presents with something slightly different or their migraines feel slightly different.

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"Or different medications work for different people so you can't just go 'here is the medication for migraines and you'll be fine'.

"You have to go through your journey to find the thing that works for you.

"That has been a long road so while my GP has been supportive, there is a limit on what they can do."

Ms Stanislawski said she was still "on her journey" and hoped that while she continued to receive treatment, she would eventually get to a place where the problem was at least manageable.

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