Not sure if others have had this happen but normally I get my cycle in May but the weather changed in the North East early this year and I went into cycle in late Feb which ended in early April. I thought that was it and went on vacation and probably drank way too much (in Ireland which is not hard to do). Within two days of returning I was hit hard again and have been now for 2 weeks. I am pretty depressed now as I never had two cycles back to back or I guess it's an extension of the first cycle. I normally take sumatriptan for the bad ones but decided to go back to my neuro to try a preventative. I asked him for verapamil but he put me on the inderal generic. I have only been on it for a few days and haven't really seen a huge improvement although its early days. Should I go back an insist on the verapamil as the neuro keeps talking about migraines and even gave me a booklet on migraines. We had already agreed that I had cluster....I only have a limited supply of the triptan so I don't want to waster time with beta blockers.

One of the nice things about a condition about which we know so little about cause, changes, processes, etc. that any guess you make to explain something is as good an explaination as the one offered by another sufferer!

Talking abou two separate cycles or the extension of one? Who knows and, ultimately, what difference does it make?

Makes sense to me to be on a preventive for longish periods vs. having to depend upon/pay for thre more expensive abortives.

Is the generic as good as the brand? We can debate our experience but only your body's response gives some indication to guide you.

During WWII, the poet laureate of N.C. wrote a poem which started, "When is the war going to end?"

Thanks I am having the normal feelings of when is this going to end or will it ever end. My greatest fear of course is going chronic. God bless all who are!!

Sorry, but we both walked into this one by surprise:

J Headache Pain. 2005 Feb;6(1):3-9. Epub 2005 Jan 25.

Chronic cluster headache: a review.

Favier I, Haan J, Ferrari MD.


Department of Neurology, K5-Q Leiden University Medical Centre, 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands.

Cluster headache (CH) is a rare but severe headache disorder characterised by repeated unilateral head pain attacks accompanied by ipsilateral autonomic features. In episodic CH, there are periods of headache attacks with pain-free intervals of weeks, months or years in between. A minority of patients have the chronic form, without pain-free intervals between the headache attacks. Chronic CH can occur as primary or secondary chronic CH; the rarest form is episodic CH arising from chronic CH. In this article, we give a review of the chronic forms of CH and focus on demographics, clinical manifestations, social habits, predictive factors, head injury, genetics, neuroimaging and therapy. IT IS REMARKABLE THAT LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT RISK FACTORS THAT MAKE CH CHRONIC.

Publication Types:
Review

PMID: 16362185 [PubMed] 
====

More of the great unknown <bg>!