I am not breathing.

I am lying on a procedure table in my doctor's office, passed out, but can still hear what is going on around me.

I am lying there, passed out and not breathing, because of the pain.

Migraine. This one was triggered by the requirements that I neither eat nor drink before a routine, midafternoon medical test. The predictable headache came early and burst sometime before the procedure, growing until the intensity finally shut my body down.

For a few seconds, I feel finally free of the terrible ordeal of breathing.

Suddenly someone slaps an oxygen mask over my face. I am jerked back. I also feel a needle in my arm pumping in the slow warmth of narcotic painkiller.

"It's temporary," the doctor tells my husband. "But it will get you home."

For 30 years, migraines like this have been a way of life. What started as an occasional headache during my first pregnancy has become an unstoppable headache that routinely courses into viselike pain, vomiting, and blackouts. I have been hospitalized, medicated, and trained to eat nothing desirable and exercise relentlessly. But the headaches still come.

And that has compelled me to try an experimental solution. Botox. Not for cosmetics. Botox for migraine. It is a treatment not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration but well into the process. A major study on the drug will be released this week in Philadelphia. I hope Botox will help people like me for whom nothing else works.

Why Botox? Because of the way it works. Famously known as the vanity drug for aging baby boomers, Botox can temporarily paralyze muscles and nerves, not only diminishing those nasty frown lines, but also, doctors report, helping to diminish chronic migraines.

Researchers are finding that injecting Botox directly into the nerve can interrupt pain signals between the skin nerves and the nerves around the brain. But they warn it's not a cure and doesn't work for most migraine sufferers.

Originally FDA-approved for uncontrolled eye blinking and crossed eyes, Botox found its calling as a cosmetic drug. And that's where the migraine story begins, because cosmetic patients with migraines who got Botox found their headaches virtually disappeared, said Diamond Headache Clinic associate director Frederick Freitag in Chicago.

This was big news. Occasional low-level migraines attack about 30 million Americans. Chronic and high-frequency migraines affect an additional six million Americans. And other migraines affect a half million more, making the total about 37 million. There are no biologic markers or cures. The drugs that exist are partial solutions. Americans spend about $3 billion a year on migraine treatments, and companies lose about $13 billion in lost wages and worker sick time.

But Botox?

Botox is a refined biological product containing a minute amount of botulinum toxin, a protein made by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. These are not the botulinum spores that occur naturally and cause botulism poisoning. Rather, Botox comes from a rigorous manufacturing process that distills the active ingredient.

Skeptics abounded.

"I didn't believe it," said Stephen Silberstein, director of the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Headache Center.

But Allergan, the largest maker of Botox products, was tantalized. It contacted the National Headache Foundation, inviting doctors to talk about Botox's potential as a migraine treatment.

Freitag was one of those who answered. What he discovered was that Botox's greatest potential might be for the so-called chronic and high-frequency migraine - the six million or so people who have a migraine almost all the time. He did not see the same potential in the episodic migraines suffered by 30 million people.

"The folks at Allergan said, 'Thank you very much, Dr. Freitag,' and sent me packing," he said. "They were looking for me to say, 'Oh, this is going to be the next end-all and cure-all for migraine headache,' and they were looking at 30 million people. The cash and dollar signs were just ticking. So I was a big letdown."