My daughter is in her cycle right now (3-4 weeks into it), and she experiencing some symptoms that I haven't heard/read about.  She's having stronger shadows than she's had in the past, and today the CH side of her face is very red and feels sunburned.  She also gets occasional "lightning-bolt" pain, lasting just a very brief time (less than a second)-- the kind of pain that I think of as being typical of trigeminal neuralgia.

She doesn't have oxygen (I know, believe me, I know!!) and she treats her CH attacks by blowing cool air from a fan onto her CH side, or using ice packs.  She says that it works really well for her . . . but I guess I'm wondering whether maybe she's somehow irritating the trigeminal nerve by doing that, and that's what her symptoms are about.

Anyone get those symptoms?  Any comments?

Thanks very much.  (I'm a long-time lurker and learner here, and I'm pretty active over at ClusterBusters, where I have also posted this question.)

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It's not unheard of to be "blessed" with more than one type of headache. Of course, new and different symptoms should always be reported to your doctor.

Thanks, Nani. 
8345 posts!  Wow--what a generous person you are.

I have both trigeminal neuralgia and CHs. Not much of a blessing, but there ya go. That lightning bolt is just one of the ways trigeminal pain can manifest. There are others, and they are even more painful than a full on CH attack. Remember it is the trigeminal nerve involvement that is behind the pain of CHs to begin with. So here's the sermon précis: get O2. The first pain to yield to the ministrations of high flow O2 was the trigeminal, leaving me with "only" the CH-eye is going to burst pain. Then that yielded, too. I have no evidence for this, other than anecdotal, but it seems the more efficiently we abort any of the hits, the less likely they are to continue in duration and frequency. Blessings. lance

wimsey1 wrote on Jul 26^th, 2013 at 8:08am:

I have no evidence for this, other than anecdotal, but it seems the more efficiently we abort any of the hits, the less likely they are to continue in duration and frequency. Blessings. lance

  Thank you very much, lance.  Incidentally, I made a similar anecdotal observation over at cb.com just a few days ago, based on my daughter's situation (she used to have O2) and that of some other posters there.