So, Hi everyone (again).

My first bout of headaches in 5 years started last Tuesday.  I have been working from home since as I don't feel comfortable dealing with an attack in a busy office.

Not only did the beast return, but to make things even more fun, I had an abscess develop in one of my front teeth that gave me "pain", this actually made me laugh as toothache was child's play! But alas the abscess infection kicked off a fever for 2 days.  This came with fever style headaches and made it very difficult to spot an oncoming attack in time to take medication.

The doctor gave me Sumatriptan again, tablet form and he splashed out big time and prescribed a huge amount... 6 of them.  So 2 days later when I started rationing them and sitting through a few headaches without I phoned him to give him a piece of my mind, but a new female doctor spoke to me and prescibed a much better amount of "melt in the mouth" equivalents.  Which are now running out again.

Like Sumatriptan they have about a 50% success rate at aborting an attack.  I expect a lot of this variance is due to getting them into your system in time.

It started with an attack at 2am and one at 9pm.  I probably should have gone into work, but by the time the fever was over the headaches had amped up to a LONG one every morning starting at 5am and coming and going until 11am with varying levels of pain mostly due to meds wearing off and having to repeat them. 

Currently I am woken at 5am light clockwork and have considered setting an alarm for 4:30 and taking medications.  Another one (or the same one returning from under the meds) at 9am.  Another early afternoon around 3pm and another at 9pm at night.  The medication has a 2 per day limit, which I remove the "engineering grace" from and go for 3 a day limit, so end up treating the later ones with nothing but pain killers.

Happily, when the meds don't abort an attack, this episode is responding to Neurophen Plus (ibruphen + codeine) for the most part, though they may be the cause of the prolonged headaches and "shadow" headaches.  A shadow headache is what I call it when the attack is not aborted, but just halted in it's escalation before it gets extreme, but the feeling of an impending attack with mild symptoms lasts for hours.

The worst ones are the ones that wake me up.  I am very hard to get out of bed until I have my 8 hours, so I was fighting the pain desparately trying to get back to sleep without realising this was foolish.  So by the time I surrendered and got up, the attack was in full swing.  Horrible way to wake up at any time of day.  Now I force myself out of bed and to the medication cabinet as soon as it first wakes me.

Medications aside the best mechanism I have for dealing with these is distraction.  I think this is the cause of so many bizarre things that people say helps them.  I believe a lot of them are just placebo forms of distraction.  Sure distraction works, but to a point, when a wave of pain spikes sometimes there is no way to distract yourself from it.  This is the time I either pace the room, rock and hold my head in hands or try the opposite of distraction, focusing and mediatating on the pain, trying to embrace it, manipulate it, isolate it, surround it, move it, change it, reduce it.  I can only hold out so long and these attempts can collapse in a series of expletives and cries.

One thing I love and this is something only a cluster headache sufferer could say, is the tiny little drop-outs of pain that come sometimes in the middle of an attack.  When the pain drops away for a few moments, 30 seconds maybe, I love it not just for the lack of pain, but for the little burst of andorphens the body releases that make me feel pleasure.  I use these to keep from getting too stressed/depressed during an attack, by trying to remind myself there might be a little drop out soon.... hopefully and I can sigh, relax, wide my eye, wipe and sniffle my nose and prepare for the next wave.

Here's to hoping this episode doesn't last much longer and here is to hoping that I will get another 5 years or more remission again.

My thoughts are with my fellow suffers, chin up folks.

Paul

Hi,
Guiseppi has given you brilliant advice, so please give it a go. 

Sumatriptan in tablet form are pretty useless as you have already discovered they take too long to get into your system. The auto injections on the other hand are fantastic and have never failed me. They will abort the worst CH in 5-7 minutes. I NEVER leave home without them. You can only use 2 per day but there is a clip on youtube that shows how to split them to get 4 doses. If your doc will prescibe it, let me know if you want to do that and I'll find it for you.

Another thing to consider is Oxygen. My new best friend. Your doctor can arrange it for you but (this is important) , you need a high flow rate of 15 - 20 litres per minute, with a non re-breather mask. Get either of those wrong and it won't work, but get it right and it will also abort a big one in about 10 minutes. The high flow acts as a vasoconstrictor,(as does sumatriptan) and takes the pressure off the trigeminal nerve. The mask prevents ordinary air from getting in which keeps the oxygen pure. I keep my oxygen by the bed for any time I'm at home, and save the precious suma for when I'm out. Sorted!

Welder's oxygen works the same, if you have a welding supply shop near you.  You can buy regulators and masks on line.  I can almost guarantee it will help reduce your amount of pain time greatly.

Good call on welders 0xygen...it's just as pure as medical, if the oxygen in welds isn't pure the welds fail and airplanes fall out of the sky!

This link will show you how to get set up with welding oxygen:

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Joe

Can't say how many times I've been "back" to this site and  after a two or three year sabbatical. Five years is definitely a good break.

You guys on this board are absolutely fantastic,a guy posts and within 12 hours he has all the relevant info to abort and prevent on the cheap,and has a solid 80% chance of going PF again. All of this without even a consultation with a doctor,Im sure he could get the welders gas delivered and hopefully find all of the D3 components in a short trip to the druggist,then order his regulator and mask online.