im riding in an MRAP this time.  F***!!  my eye is starting to water, my nose is starting to run.  i have been trying so hard to hide it, i dont want my men seeing me like this.  my knee bounces uncontrollably.  i can keep silent while im suffering this torture, but i can never seem to keep my knee from bouncing.  its the knee that gives me away this time.  my dark lenses hide my eyes, and my helmet hides the furrow in my brow.  i cant hide the shaking though.  the first person to pick up on it is one of the new team leaders in my platoon.  my squad leader knows what is going on, and so does his other team leader, but this guy doesnt know.  he hasnt seen it, and of course he has no idea what it feels like.  nobody does.  its my burden to bear.  i start thinking to myself, "i shouldnt be here, i shouldnt even be in the army with these damn headaches, i shouldnt be having them..."  was it the army that caused them?  no, i dont think so, but i never had headaches like these until i went down from severe muscle damage resulting from some extremely tough training.  i always thought of myself as being tough, but damn! i never dreamed something could be this painful.  my train of thought gets interupted by another spike.  im still on the verap and vitamin D, and i didnt miss a dose on last nights patrol... is this one going to top out at a 5 or 6 like they normaly do lately?  i clench, gripping my rifle so hard i start to shake, hard.  im gonna have to use the trex.  i hate using it, as i only have a few precious cartridges left, and they always seem to throw the beast way off balance, out of rythm, but im not in a situation to deal with a full hit.  i start reaching into my calf pocket, where i keep my injection kit.  "hey, what the f*** is  wrong with you?"  i let out one word.  "Headache..."  he tells me to man up and deal with it.  an image flashes through my head that involves the buttstock of my rifle and his face.  instead i pull out my injection kit while i still can, load it, and fire it off into my thigh.  this stuff is a godsend, i dont know what i would do if i didnt have it.  i certainly wouldnt be able to do my job.  thats the good part about being in the Army, they give me plenty of the meds i need for free.  the bad part is that i am way out here in the middle of nowhere, and when i run out of the meds i need, i cant get a refill any time soon.  im still waiting on my next refill of imitrex.  i can only hope that i can manage on what i have until my refills make it to me.  i suddenly feel overwhelmed by that familiar tingling and heavy sensation, like my head is slightly swirling and the veins in my neck start pulling themselves tight like the strings of a violin.  reliefe...  the pain is getting less and less severe.  as the pain recedes i can feel the violin strings pulling on my inner ear, making tiny clicking sensations.  im not sure if i feel the clicks or hear the clicks.  after a few minutes i realize that we are aproaching our AO.  i dismount and direct my team to pull security behind cover while the rest of the patrol dismounts.   as i move out, walking through the filthiest place i have ever seen, i begin to forget all about the pain i was in just minutes ago.  i give my squad leader a quick nod to let him know that im fine and push all irrelevant thoughts out of my head.  i need to have a clear mind now.  cant be distracted.  im in bahgdad, and im on point.

im just glad trex works so damn good or me.

Auban, you poor thing.  This post really broke my heart.  I can't even stand to have someone in the same room with me when I'm going through an attack -- I can't imagine what it must be like under that set of circumstances.  Does anything else work for you that you could take more "discretely"?  Such as the zomig nasal spray (it's fairly small, and you could play it off like a sinus thing)?  It's an odd shape (sort of a plastic t-shape) but I think it would fit into a camo pocket.  I can't take Imitrex but the zomig does wonders for me in aborting.  And I've personally never tried this, but given all the wonderful things said about Red Bull, maybe taking a no-doz or other highly caffeinated pill 1/2 hour before your attacks might bring them down a notch?  I'm new to this board but I've seen other people talk about other abortives -- see if you can order several of them through your docs so you've got an arsenal on hand.  I haven't tried the calcium, D3, magnesium, omega routine (several posts here) but maybe that would be another route for you to try?  If there is anything I can do to help please let me know -- I'd buy any OTC stuff for you and ship them.

i actually had quite a few tricks that would get me through patrolls.  i carried an "admin pouch" on my kit that was big enough to carry a water bottle along with my pens and notepad and other "admin" type items.  i would normaly pick up some sugar free energy drinks from the local iraqi mart, usually one of the two brands wild tiger or boom boom.  i would shake them up so that they were flat and then pour them into the bottle i carried on my kit.  i also had 1000 mg tablets of taurine and 1000mg guarana tablets(loaded with caffiene).  at the first sign of an attack, i would slam the energy drink and take both a taurine and a guarana tablet.  the energy drink being flat was easy to chug, and being sugar free would not spoil in the heat.  at least not before i got back to base anyway.  i also carried trex injections in my calf pocket, just in case the energy drink and pill combo didnt work.  for exceptionally long patrols, i would load up on a few days doses of verapamil and vitamin d.  i also found that taking large amounts of melatonin (35mg and up, popping them like candy) would cause me to skip attacks, but would only work until the day after i managed to get to sleep.  i carried my mix of pills in an empty melatonin bottle in my admin pouch.  my wife sent me plenty of melatonin.

i wouldnt by any means call this a healthy lifestyle.  when i left for iraq, i was already skinny, at 5'/7" and only about 135lbs.  when i came back, i weighed about 118lbs.

on top of all this, i drank lots and lots of water.

on a side note, the melatonin/verapamil/vitamin d/tuarine/caffiene combo left me with many many very lucid dreams.  i also seemed to gain a much better memory, as long as it wasnt when i first woke up. 

for example, my squad leader once came in early in the morning(around 2am) and gave me details about an upcoming mission i needed to prep my guys for.  i instinctively wrote everything down, but once he left i couldnt for the life of me remember a single word he said.  after looking at my notes, i was able to memorize six ten digit grid coordinates in the time it took me to wake up my team.  i still remember the grid coordinates today, about 6 months later.

things are much simpler now that i am back home.  i know when i get to sleep and i know when i get to eat.  i still get mild hits a few times a day, but they arent responding to any triggers.  i think the normal sleep schedule has a lot to do with that.