A good start would be to see if you can get your friend to come to this board.

There is a ton of knowledge to be found here.  There are many who will reach out and do all they can to help your friend.

We all need supporters like you who care.  Thanks for being there for your friend.

Carol

I'm not qualified to deal with suicidal people, but I will comment that you need to explain to him that he has NOT exhausted all avenues to get control of Cluster Headaches.

So many people come her saying that "they have tried everything" only to discover how untrue that was. Most of us are not Doctors, but our collective experience is truly astounding.

With CH's, it is easy to let depression and feelings of isolation take over - but it is critical to understand that there truly are ways to retake control of his life!

We've been there, we understand.

Marc

Yeah it seems so, this is what I'm trying to make him understand. He just gave me a massive long list of a load of the things he HAS tried, and it seems like a lot (I'm sure there's still plenty more as I have seen just from looking on the message board here) but is there maybe different effects from taking the certain things he's prescribed differently to maybe how the doctor says he should take it? I'm sure I've read that some people have taken matters into their own hands to a certain extent. So maybe he needs to try them in a different format/different combinations? Am not entirely sure.. Bit out of my depth I think

Just want to start by saying what a great friend you are to have been researching for him and joining us as a supporter. Hate to be repetitive but it's true that only a couple of real cluster treatments could have been tried by now as the diagnois is so new. Many doctors don't know what they are doing when it comes to this since it is "rare" so to speak. So even if a laundry list of things have been tried, they unfortuantely probably have nothing to do with real cluster treatments. Your post caught my attention because I too was suicidal when they began for me. Instant hopelessness is a seemingly side effect of these nasty things. I'm sorry you are seeing first hand why they also call them suicide headaches. If it seems slowgoing to get him to join us, try having him search cluster headaches on youtube.com as just seeing other grown men going through the same thing and literally recording themselves while going through one may help just the littlest bit in seeing it's real and people live through it nonetheless. Just a thought. Not all men are ready to join a "support group" as I'm sure you can imagine.

Wow, so much to take in! Thank you all for being so responsive

Well, he seems to have cheered up a little bit as I have been talking things through with him over the past couple of days. He seems fairly reluctant to join any sort of group, and has said that he has looked through forums and read quite a few posts (he's very up on his research) but it seems to have done the opposite thing for him, and instead of giving him hope, has made him take on more of a 'what does it matter im going to have them forever anyway' approach. as far as i know he hasnt had a period of remission since he first started getting them in april too.. I'm not sure how long the periods of getting them last for.. but that seems like a pretty long stint? Please correct me if I'm way off. As far as I know medication-wise, he's taking some sort of sleeping pill type thing that knocks him out for around 16 hours or so (I personally don't think this is a good thing..) and has decided to self medicate right now with ketamine when he thinks he's gonna get one. Which is also an appallling plan. However, he now seems to realise this. I don't think he uses anything else to prevent or abort, but I need to probe him a little further (he's only just started talking to me about it, so I don't want to push it too far).

I know he tried some oxygen in the beginning, but I don't think he could get enough of it on the NHS, for some reason or another. But again, I haven't spoken to him enough about it as he's fairly reluctant it seems.

He did tell me he's so far been put on sumatripan, zolmitriptan, some kind of steroid, methysergide, andother triptan, and 2 other SSRI's he can't remember the name of.

That's pretty much where we're at right now

Hate to be real blunt here, but why in the hell would your friend use ketamine?

   What are the street names/slang terms for Ketamine?
Cat Valium, K, Special-K, Vitamin K.
What is Ketamine?
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic developed in 1963 to replace PCP and currently used in human anesthesia and veterinary medicine. Much of the ketamine sold on the street has been diverted from veterinarians' offices. Ketamine's chemical structure and mechanism of action are similar to those of PCP. 


      

Oh, yeah, he wasn't 'prescribed' it, it's not legal