Calling In Sick With a Migraine: The Exact Message to Send

Send it as a message, not a call, and send this:

“I’ve woken up with a migraine and won’t be in today. I’ll check messages once this afternoon and confirm about tomorrow then.”

That’s the whole job. Migraine, named plainly; one line about availability; nothing apologised for. Press send, put the phone face down, go back to the dark. Everything below is for the version of you that has been drafting and deleting since 6:40 with one eye shut and the brightness at minimum, convinced that whatever you write will read as a hangover.

Why “migraine” beats “not feeling well”

Vague feels safer. It isn’t. “Not feeling great today” is what every excuse in history has sounded like, so it invites exactly the reading you’re afraid of. “Migraine” is the name of a neurological condition, and naming a condition invites nothing. Nobody replies to “I have a migraine” asking for proof. The suspicion you’re bracing for lives mostly in your own head at 6:50am, and softening the wording is what would feed it if it existed.

There’s a second reason, and it matters more each time this happens. If attacks keep costing you work days, your message history is a record. Six texts that each say “migraine”, with dates attached, are the start of a paper trail. Six that say “under the weather” are six unrelated sick days. The Migraine Trust’s guidance on getting support for migraine at work says keeping a record of your symptoms helps when you come to discuss how migraine affects you, and lists making allowances for migraine-related sickness absence among the adjustments employers should consider. A pattern only gets allowances once it’s visible as a pattern.

Why a message and not a call

You are calling in sick with the one condition that makes a phone call its own ordeal. A call mid-attack means performing illness in real time, hunting for words while your head pounds, to someone who can’t see you. And migraine works against you on the phone: your voice can sound completely normal while your vision has a hole in it.

A message does everything the call does, can be written in the ninety seconds your eyes will tolerate a screen, and leaves the dated record the last section was about. If your workplace expects a call, send the message anyway and include “can’t manage a call right now” — that sentence is true, and it’s worth having in writing too.

The other three messages

Mid-attack, minimum viable. For when full sentences aren’t happening:

“Migraine. Can’t work today, can’t manage a call. Will update this afternoon.”

Fragments are fine. Nobody reads that and thinks hangover — hangovers write in full sentences and over-explain.

It started at work and you need to leave.

“A migraine started about an hour ago and it’s building, so I’m going home before it peaks. [Name] knows where [the project] stands. I’ll confirm about tomorrow in the morning.”

Walking out at 2pm feels more incriminating than never arriving. It’s actually more credible: nobody stages an exit in front of the whole office. Say it, hand over one thing, and go while you can still travel safely.

The day after.

“Back today. Yesterday was a full migraine day. I’m working through the backlog in order, so flag anything urgent.”

Say it once, then stop. The day-after temptation is to over-perform recovery, to retroactively prove yesterday was real. You don’t owe anyone that show, and if you’re in the washed-out day-after stage, staging one costs more than it buys.

Three things to leave out

• The symptom inventory. Listing the aura, the vomiting, and the timeline reads like a case being built, and cases get built by people expecting disbelief. State, don’t argue.
• The second apology. Zero apologies is correct, because you’re reporting an absence, not asking a favour. If one slips out anyway, stop there. “Sorry for the short notice, sorry to leave you short-handed, sorry again” reads as guilt, and guilt reads as fault.
• “I’ll keep an eye on email from bed.” You won’t, and half-working through an attack mostly produces mistakes for tomorrow. It also quietly converts this sick day, and every future one, into a work-from-bed day. Don’t offer what you don’t owe.

If this is the third time this month

Then no wording fixes it, because the wording was never the problem. A manager who has seen three migraine absences in four weeks isn’t parsing your phrasing; they’re wondering what next month looks like. The move is to get ahead of that question with the adjustments conversation — flexible start times, lighting, somewhere dark for twenty minutes — and how to ask for migraine accommodations at work walks through it, including the sentence to open with.

What that conversation needs from you is a day count, not a story. How many attacks in the last ninety days, how many work days they cost, roughly when they hit. Paper works if paper is what you’ll maintain; Migraine Journal builds the same count from about a minute of logging per attack, which matters because the days you most need recorded are the ones you least feel like recording. Start counting now, before you need it — “I get a lot of migraines” and “eleven attacks since May, six on work days” are different conversations. And if the attacks themselves are newly frequent, that count belongs in front of your doctor as much as your manager.

If honesty gets punished where you work

Some workplaces make everything above sound naive, and only you can judge how much to say in yours. Notice what the written message does even there: it’s a dated record, in your own words, that you reported a named condition — a phone call leaves nothing behind. And there’s a version of this whole topic written for the other side of the desk, which exists partly so you can forward it to a manager who means well and doesn’t know what to do.

When you’re vertical again, spend two minutes logging yesterday — date, how long, what it cost you. That count is what every later conversation runs on, and the rest of the migraine-at-work guides are there when you’re ready for the next one.