Well, the beast is pulling more tricks out of his bag.  Lately I get these strange sharp stabbing pains that seem to begin just beneath my left eye and left nostril and radiate down to my upper jaw and teeth.  They are almost too fast to put a Kip number on them, but they occur in rapid succession for couple hours at a time.  My eye gets a little red and my nose runs a LOT.  Its like someone cut a power cable to a fan and put the hot wires in my skull and just flips a switch on and off.  It really is wierd.  Its also very surprising how painful and sudden these "spikes" are.  I recently experienced a tooth dying, and at first I thought that this might be the same thing,  but the pain never became long and continuous as it did when my tooth died.  On top of that, it hits me at about the same time I normally get hit by a regular CH, and in lue of my  normal symptoms.  I find them easier to deal with than what I am used to, but I must admit, it has left me weary of what is coming.  I have that impending sense of doom, like I am just waiting for the beast to turn really nasty.  I already scheduled another appointment with my neuro, but that isn't until the 26th. 

OK, here I'm talking out of my hat, but I do know what my experiences have been. There have been times when, along with the "usual" pain of a cluster, I've had accompanying pain of a varied and violent nature. It's kinda hard to describe though. A bit like an ice bar moving slowly through my head from temple to temple. Or an electric net being dropped over my head and firing off. Or even hammer blows to the temple on my affected side. Along with the unbelievable burning and pressure behind my affected eye. I think because the trigeminal nerve is involved in CHs, a whole bunch of "extras" can come with an attack. When I first ramped up to 480mg verapamil, it was the first thing I noticed: it eliminated the side shows and left me with "just" my eye is going to explode out of its socket pain. Actually, it cut my pain in half. Trigeminal nerve activity may be present always, but this kind of activity should be shared with your headache specialist. God bless. lance

No, although I have had short stabbing pains from time to time, rarely. And fortunately what I described above is very rare, too. The doc had a name for it but I can't remember what it was. Think of it more like a blunt round pole pushing its way slowly from one temple to the other. It sounds dumb to me even now, but that's how it felt. Blessings. lance