My husband has sufferred from cluster headaches for approximately 10 years.  He is now in his early 30s.  When he was in his early 20s, he had them year-round, three times a day like clockwork.  When I met him (approx 6 years ago) they were more episodic but the episodes were frequent and there was not a lot of time in between the episodes.  He had been diagnosed at some point with clusters but the doctor he had gone to apparently didn't know anything about the appropriate treatment of them.  When we met, I insisted he go to a headache specialist.  Thus, we found the Headache Care Clinic in Springfield, MO.  His doctor there has really been wonderful and it was nice to find someone who instantly understood what he was going through and how to treat it.  He began taking Verapamil and it has worked wonderfully for him.  For over a year, no headaches.  Then they came back.  Rounds of prednisone have helped to kick the episode early in the past and his dose of verapamil has been increased over time.  At one point it was increased too much, had an adverse effect on his blood pressure, so we scaled back.  His doc has been diligent about monitoring the effects of the meds and I am thankful for that.

He started a new episode about a month ago and it has by far been the worst I have ever seen (and he has ever experienced).  Multiple headaches, back to back with no relief.  A round of prednisone this time didn't do anything to help.  His usual treatments for the headache (Imitrex shots and Oxygen) are only working sporadically.  On top of it, he has developed a sinus infection that is slipping into chest congestion and this seems to be making it a lot worse.  My husband has always seen a link between the typical allergy season and the onset of an episode.  Because of this, his doc has prescribed Astelin to take when he feels his sinuses are becoming congested.  Right now, mold spores are really high here so an allergy attack makes sense.  He seems to be getting cluster headaches that just won't go away.  A normal headache for him lasts 30 minutes or so but these are lasting for hours.

He had been taking Sudafed for the sinus symptoms and Claritin to help prevent the allergy symptoms.  He talked with his doc today and he said to stop taking both - that Sudafed can make a headache worse and he should be taking Allergra instead of Claritin.  This is new information for us.  His doc has prescribed allergra and a nasal medicine with a steroid that he will begin taking today.

I'm interested to learn others experiences with sinuses congestion/allergies and CH.  I've read that the CH can actually be the cause of the sinus congestion (rather than the sinus congestion causing the CH). 

Welcome to Clusterville. Sorry you had to find us, but you're in the right place.

Don't really know what to tell you about the allergies... a lot of us are having a worse time this year than we normally do. ????? It happens and we just can't explain it. May be caused by allergies - who knows - this beast just has a mind of its own.

On the ear thingy - has the doc considered TUBES... works pretty good for my son. Relieves the pressure for him. If I were you, I'd ask about them.

Melatonin at night (9-12 mg) helps a lot of us get thru the night hits.

How is hubby using the O2?  What flow rate and is he using the RIGHT mask. Check the O2 info on the left and make sure he's doing it right. It's the #1 abort used by most of  us around here.

Let us know what they've used and what's going on.

Hugs BD