Hi all

I'm new to this site & to cluster headaches (well, sort of! More about that in a minute!).

Ok so where do I start? This last week has been a bit of a rollercoaster, to be honest.

About 3 weeks ago my partner was ill with a bad cold and sinus infection. A few days later, I developed a minor cold but felt largely quite healthy. Fast forward a day or two and every time I coughed or looked at bright light (including the TV screen), I got searing pain behind my left eye. It would last about 45 minutes and then disappear. Given that I had been slightly ill, I attributed this to a sinus infection and thought no more of it. I'd had similar things in the past, but usually they seemed to sort themselves out after a day or two. Fast forward a week and it was Easter bank holiday weekend. Due to the good fortune of British citizens having multiple bank holidays (& a royal wedding!) all together, we'd both taken off the 3 days inbetween to give us 11 days off work. I was quite excited, although now anxious because my weird sinus infection headaches hadn't gone. In fact, my cold had totally gone and the headaches were now more severe, longer in duration, and more frequent.

I considered the possibility of caffeine withdrawal. My partner had been making an effort to eat healthier, and one of the things I had decided to change was how much crap I put into my body in terms of sugar, salt & caffeine as I figured it couldn't exactly be doing any good. But something told me this wasn't quite right - for one, caffeine withdrawal only happens if you go cold turkey after drinking lots of caffeinated products per day - and I was going from 1 daily can of Pepsi to nothing. For another thing, the headache pain I was feeling seemed to be like pressure building up in my eye and behind my eye. It felt for all the world like someone was squeezing my eyeball with their fingers whilst pressing on my optic nerve and simultaneously sliding a redhot poker into my brain. The pain got worse each day until I just felt unable to do anything. I'd be screaming inside but unable to move - and feeling like my eye and head would explode with pressure. This continued to get worse over the course of our week off together until it reached the point that I was in waves of pain for pretty much the entire day, every day. I tried painkillers - paracetamol, ibuprofen, even co-codamol (not all at once) - and was horrified and intrigued to discover that nothing worked. There was no discernible effect whatsoever. At this point, the internet was my friend and it soon became apparent that this was typical of migraines. Ahhh, of course. But I already suffered from migraines so this was not news to me. Luckily I don't get them too often, but when I do, migraines are the worst thing ever. And I've suffered some mighty pain in my life - perforated eardrums, dislocated kneecaps, wisdom tooth extraction, IBS cramps. None of these comes close to migraine. But I was confused - the symptoms I'd been getting didn't match my normal migraine pattern. Usualky, I'll get an aura of swirling and pulsating dark and light patches in my peripheral vision that gradually takes over my vision completely over about 20 minutes, dizziness, nausea, extreme fatigue and heavy limbs. Painkillers do nothing for this either - my coping strategy is to lie down in a quiet, dark room and sleep until it passes. I can do nothing else. This wasn't what I had been experiencing at all. With these recent headaches they were spontaneous, no aura (which, with migraine, is what I consider my 'alarm'), no nausea and no dizziness.

Well, that was until a few days ago when I started getting dizzy along with the more severe attacks. It would get so bad that I couldn't focus properly.

On Tuesday my partner & I returned to work after the break. I work an office job, so I wasn't sure how I'd cope with my new headaches in an office environment. I also felt dog-tired because I'd been napping around the headaches and spending much of my time resting and then sleeping fitfully at night. Tuesday wasn't actually that bad - mostly because I didn't actually spend much time at my desk due to meetings. Wednesday, however, was another story. It was truly awful to be sat, helpless, in front of what felt like a glaring white screen under fluorescent lighting with one eye feeling like it would explode and the world spinning around me. And that's without mentioning the searing pain that ebbed and flowed throughout the day. Well, flowed and flowed.

In the afternoon I made an appointment with my GP for Monday, and told my partner something wasn't right. 

That night the pain was unrelenting, and I just huddled myself on the sofa feeling pitiful. I vowed that if I was feeling like this in the morning I'd be going to the GP then never mind waiting til Monday!

Anyway, yesterday I awoke with a searing pain again, so I took it upon myself to call into work sick - I told them it was a migraine because I thought 'weird random headaches' was too vague a description - and went straight to the doctor. He looked in my eye and said it was fine and promptly diagnosed me with cluster headaches. He asked me if I had experienced this in the past so I explained about my assumption about sinus infections. Either way, he gave me some stuff called Maxalt Melts which he said were specially designed for these attacks.

Anyway - feeling slightly anxious about all this, but glad to share my story with others in the same situation. It's incredibly reassuring to know I'm not alone.

Thanks for reading.

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Given your migraine history is makes sense that you get back to a headache specialist. It's not very common but headaches which are a mixture of migraine & Cluster regularly hit the medical literature.

I believe that pushing your doc for a referral to a headache clinic would be best. You need the sophistication which they have.