If you've ever had a migraine, you know how hard it is to function. You just want to crawl into a dark, quiet room; not exactly the typical work setting.

Now, relief may be just a puff away.

Shuly Edwards loves hanging out with her daughters, but frequent debilitating migraines quickly turned play into pain.

"It's like you were hit by a truck,” says Shuly. “It's like you can't physically do it. You can't get past that pulsating feeling, this heaviness in your head, this throbbing, shooting pain behind your eye."

She suffered up to 20 migraines a month, making it extremely difficult for her to watch three kids under seven.

"The pain was just so overwhelming and the nausea was so overwhelming I couldn't function at all," Shuly says.

She got a little relief from medications, but they took hours to work and caused another problem.

"I felt nauseous from those medicines," Shuly says.

So she enrolled in a clinical trial to try a new device which administers migraine medicine through an inhaler.

It's called Levadex, developed by Map Pharmaceuticals.

The company reformulated an old drug that's been around for 60 years and is usually given intravenously so it can now be given in a new way.

Allergist Dr. James Wolfe followed patients during one of the clinical trials.

"When the headache went away like it did in two-thirds of the patients, it stayed away and the patient tolerated the drug without significant side effects," says Dr. Wolfe.

For Shuly, that meant no nausea.

"We also showed in our studies that we could keep the migraine away for 2, and even 48 hours on the back end,” says Tim Nelson, CEO of MAP Pharmaceuticals. “On the front end we showed it could treat the migraine very quickly."

Shuly experienced relief in just 30 minutes.

The FDA has not yet approved Levadex. More clinical trials are needed, but Dr. Wolfe says it could potentially help the more than 26 million people who suffer migraines.

"This is a breakthrough product," says Dr. Wolfe.

Shuly couldn't agree more.

"I can function with my kids and I can play with them and I don't feel like I might have this debilitating thing,” says Shuly. “I don't feel trapped."

If the research goes well, Levadex could be on the market in three years.