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Could not disagree more. First off, you will quickly be labeled in their system as a drug seeker. Second, narcotics do little to alleviate the pain of CH. Lastly, if you're looking to trade physical pain for another kind, which narcotics will get you, then you're beyond my abilities to help. You need help, but I'm not qualified to give it.

This is my first post and although i used to suffer greatly from CH i have not had an attack for some 12 months or so now.

The first post on this thread makes mention of Fibromyalgia a mate of mine also suffers from this condition and i really feel for the bloke.

I thought i would add to this post as it may be of some benefit to your Husband, my friend gets great relief from sessions of Bowen therapy it maybe worthwhile booking a session.

Now for CH, i don't think anyone can give us suffers a straight answer as to what causes CH i think in my case is way to many knocks to the head.

I suffer from Horners syndrome and CH is one of the symptoms, i suffered for a good many years and had numerous tests eg MRI and CAT scans all clear.

I will add what helped alleviate some of the symptoms associated with this brutal condition, I found keeping fluid levels up to be of some benefit, alcohol definitely does not work as a means of pain management as you have all probably found it only worsens it.

I think in some cases it is related to some sort of circulatory condition as i noticed while i was having an attack i would try and go straight to the shower and have it as hot as possible this i think improved circulation by thinning the blood as the body warms up.

I also found staying away from products high in sugar helped as well, also fatty foods seemed to trigger attacks also, eye strain and not getting enough sleep do not help either.

After having a shower as hot as i can stand it and forcing myself to sit still i would get out of the shower wet and sit in front of the fan or aircon it sounds bizarre and probably not advisable but it did seem to help.

Unfortunately that's all i have, even if it helps a little it's still worthwhile, anyway good luck to you all.

Regards- Stu

Hello there, Stu.  I take it that with your user name, you are a ham operator from Australia?

Carolyn~aka~KM5YL

G'day All

"I will assume you are joking with this statement" no I am not jokin only guessing as i have had a hell of a lot of heavy knocks to the head whether this has caused the Horner's syndrome i haven't a clue.

"Hello there, Stu.  I take it that with your user name, you are a ham operator from Australia" G'day Carolyn, yes I am a ham from VK as in the state of Queensland.

I don't usually use my call as a user-name but if i cannot think of one off the top of my head straight away i just use vk4vfx as it is easy to remember.

I just counted in my favorites all the forums i am a member of and there is 26 of em covering all different subjects so it is a bit hard to keep track of 26 user-names nice to meet ya I hope the God's of propagation are being kind to you so far in 2011

"Read the oxygen info tab on the left" Thanks Joe yes i was havin a read last visit i had heard of it before but not really done any real heavy readin into it but it sounds like it definitely does the trick that's for sure, i would dare say a cylinder of Co2 wouldn't be cheap though?

I did read many years ago so this will also be old info that there was some University in the U.S that were studying the effects of the chemical found in Magic mushrooms cylabin is it? anyway maybe someone can throw some light on that, this chemical they found was of some benefit to CH sufferers.

After readin through some of the posts on this forum it's sad to see there are some sufferers that are extremely distressed by their condition and i can fully sympathize as we all know there are different levels of symptoms some sufferers are chronic some not i wouldn't label myself "chronic" but i know how bad it can get.

With a few of my memorable episodes where i was smashin my head nearly as hard as i could on the wall to get some sort of relief from the agony to the point where i split my head open, I am sure we have all done this at some stage?

As I mentioned above I am not that well read on all the new pain management techniques so i will have a good read before i log out, it seems maybe there is not to much research going into the actual cause of CH I think it is not just one thing it is a conglomerate of things.

Is it environmental? hereditary? and yes i read about the hereditary bit in Linda's post there is no family history on my end, being a rather little known illness and a small percentage of sufferers could be the reason why there is little research into it that's usually the way it works until some high profile individual eg Michael J Fox starts to suffer from it they then chuck a heap of money at it it then gets a heap of publicity etc etc etc and ya know how the rest goes, same with Christopher Reaves.

Anyway I am rambling on so I will leave it here, one thing I am sure of and that is suicide is not the answer and you must be a chronic long term sufferer and as one of the people here inn this thread suggested, you need to get professional help I really hope it works out for you.

Cheers to all.