I am on the fourth day of a headache, the symptoms of which only happened to me once before, about a year and half ago. The pain is only on the right side of my head, it's off and on, the first two days my right eye teared and my right nostril dripped, some of the pains are short, very painful sharp stabs that make me gasp, some are duller. The first one woke me at 2am and I was in terrible pain for two hours. So far, sounds like a cluster. However, the first two days, I happened to be off from work, and I stayed at home, feeling sick enough to not want to do anything, but not banging my head against the wall (see migraines below  :). I have been able to work for the last two days.

So - the pain is not as intense as has been described by everyone, and not as intense as in the migraines I've occasionally had over the years, which were around 9 on the Kip scale - total head banging misery, no possible way I could go to work or do anything besides writhe in my bed, which is the opposite of what people have reported here.

I did see my doctor after the first bout in 2007, and she did a cursory neurological exam and asked some questions, but she left it that, and to keep her informed if it happened again.

Has anyone experienced less intense cluster headaches?

Thanks,
Susan

It can be really hard to compare headaches from day to day, and our memory of the pain can be very sketchy- what you need is to start keeping a headache diary: one like a graph, that goes hour by hour, so you can really keep track and see patterns...
It also helps to make note of meds you take, triggers, sleeping patterns, etc.  The more solid information you can give your doctor the better.
As for intensity, everybody's beast is different...I know that my cycle started low (K3-4's) and ramped up over several months to the 10's.  Are you so sure those were migraines you were having in the past?  Because head banging is the LAST thing a migraine makes you do, but it's a prime clue for clusters.
Just keep reading posts and doing research, and if your doctor just "asks a few questions" and "leaves it at that" then you need a doc who specializes in headaches.  This is a very specialized area and you can't leave it to someone who doesn't really know their stuff.  good luck!

Thanks, undertheradar - keeping a diary sounds like an excellent idea, because there is a lot to keep track of in terms of time, duration, intensity, triggers, etc.

Actually, I was using the term "hang banging" a little loosely - wasn't literally banging my head during migraines, but I did feel everything else in the "9" range of the Kip scale. My daughter, who is 18, has suffered from migraines chronically since she was a young child, and sees a neurologist, and her symptoms pretty much correlate with what I feel when I have had the occasional migraine. However - this headache that I have now is completely different.    :)

Susan

Cool...good to know you have knowledge with migraines...the tricky part (at least in my experience lately) is differentiating between CH and other types of headaches- that's where a doc with CH experience comes in.  Like just last week, I had what felt like a K9 cluster hit, but it lasted from 4pm to noon the next day!!  I thought surely, this is something different... but my (experienced) doctor said he's had other female CH patients for whom the clusters last longer and ramp up and down more gradually, so I probably had several hits, but they just kinda "flowed" together  (yay.)

It seems that mine has gotten pretty mild since the late 30's.  20's and early 30's ones were the suicidal ones.

Also frequency and intensity increase in the mid-cycle then taper off.  I have a perfect "bell shape".

I don't mean to give you false hope, but some of us find CH to get milder with age.

Interesting about the age thing. I am 52 and find from reading that I am not only in the small minority of women who experience CHs but also in the smaller minority of women over 40 who experience them, especially for the first or, in this case, second time.

Also interesting is that my migraines (as did my mother's) peaked in my 20s and 30s, as your CHs did, MrsT.