Are clusters covered by the ADA act? If you lose your job because of clusters, are you protected? I was wrote up today for leaving my work station to go to my car to use my tank. One more write up and I will lose my job.

Check headache links to the left of this page...I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I think most employers probably need to attempt to accomodate a disability.  
I am on SS disability due to chronic cluster headaches, so yes, CH can be considered a disability.  (A bit of a shock that was, having the government agree with me) :o

PFDAN
kathy

Thank you Kathy, though I am episodic a public episode is rare. I try to keep this under wraps as much as possible. I had a verbal warning for leaving my station last week, and a written one today. I have read the note for employers and think that will not go over well with them. How can I approach them without freaking them out, I should only have another 3 weeks to go before I am PF again.

My advice, although I don't know if it's a good one, is to show them how bad your headaches exactly are. Don't take any abortives, have a nice and painful public attack at your post.

That should make those bastards at least understand what you're going through.

Where the hell do you work at? What kind of workplace has that kind of inhumane treatment towards workers? It's not like the O2 is holding you away from your post as long as you'd be unable to do anything without it.

- Best regards and PFDAN,
Rosa

I had to leave my work today for a quick huff on the bottle. The boss told me after I explained, "You should have told me that at the interview." I said," you should have asked."
check out this link and have the doctor fill out the form.
FMLA if you have to take some time off.
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all the best
thebb

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It's OUR responsibility to establish, with our employer, medical/physical conditions which affect our ability to do the job.

CYA is the operative stance!

I find my work much more lenient when I tell them I have a migraine. :o

I know that's fightin words in the cluster world, but having an incurable disease is a big turn off to a buisiness man wanting to make money from your labor, especially when your talking headaches.

It sucks, but you gotta survive.

PFDAN to all
JOHN

Mandy,

What ever you do to inform your employer about your cluster headaches, just be aware the results can go either way and have unintended consequences.  There are folks here at CH.com with far more experience in this area.  I would contact E-Double and set up a phone call to go over all the details and options.  He's a behavioral psychologist and makes his living doing things like this.

You also may want to consider the following approach. One method of relating the fact that you suffer from cluster headaches to your employer is to engage in a conversation based on the following logic.  

Ask your supervisor what they would do if you had diabetes instead of cluster headaches, and needed to take a shot of insulin?  If your supervisor's response indicates any level of understanding, tell your supervisor that although the cluster headache disorder is not fatal, an attack must be treated with the same urgency with which a diabetes sufferer takes insulin to prevent going into shock.

If you see even more understanding, show your supervisor the video of Chuck Setzco's cluster headache attack at the following link:

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Make sure your supervisor watches this video with you at that time.  For this video to have a maximum beneficial impact, It's very important your supervisor sees what happens to Chuck while you are standing or seated next to him and ready to answer any questions.

Take care and good luck,

V/R, Batch