Hello earthtone and welcome.

The self portrait is spot on. Have you tried the D3 regimen ?.

Peter.

Bob Johnson wrote on Apr 26^th, 2016 at 3:25pm:


Hey I appreciate the sentiment, unfortunately for me I have twice had it diagnosed by neurologists and after 9 years of seeing both my family physician and headache specialist I am trusting of their assessment.

The first time I was diagnosed I was using sodium naproxen and rizatriptan as abortive but the heartburn was awful from the naproxen. Like I said, I consider myself lucky that OTC meds can manage my pain - though waiting with a full blown why me? K8 or 9 for the 40 minutes it takes to kick in still sucks. I just curl into the fetal position with my hand on my throbbing temple vein and rock and roll and ride it out.

Had some success with triptans but the pills were $17 bucks a pop and using OTCs that took a little longer was always the way I had to go.

I stopped using calcium channel blockers about 3 years ago and I'm now 5 CH cycles in aborted entirely using the cluster buster method. If I keep on top of my doses between cycles they tend to skip one or be very mild. Sometimes life just gets away from you and the beast jumps out from behind a bush and takes me down again.

I'm intensely alcohol sensitive which according to Oliver Sack's book is a hallmark of CH but my red wine sensitivity is out of control. I can't even smell the stuff without getting an attack during a cycle. Even thinking about it is making my shadow throb right now 

Looks like a lot of good support and experience here. Looking forward to meeting everyone.

Cheers!

A Non-rebreather mask has a bag on it. A rebreather mask does not, Doctors and oxygen suppliers often get this wrong. If you read through the "oxygen info" yellow tab on the left you find some valuable info.

Welcome to the site,     Don

Thanks everyone!

I spoke to my neurologist today about the vitamin D3 regimen and she was supportive and felt that given our geographic location it is likely I am deficient at the very least over the winter months. I'm not going to have bloodwork done partly based on her opinion and partly because between two home businesses and an 18 month old and my CH I don't have any spare time. Fingers crossed!!

I also got my prescription in for O2 - 15L/min via a non-rebreather. Good news is that it's only $35 per month for a tank and regulator with ~3 hours of O2 at that flow rate and $25 per refill. Very affordable and they deliver, teach me to use it and maintain all the equipment.

Just pulling through a 7 month long cycle of CHs almost everyday and more than one a day for the first couple weeks and VERY MUCH looking forward to trying the O2 and D3.

I'll report how it goes in the coming weeks.

Thanks Peter,

I wanted to see if I was still in a cycle two days ago so I poured myself a nice 2 fingers of single malt for the first time in a loooooooooong time. I think I mentioned my alcohol sensitivity during a CH cycle is out of control.

Anyway, I managed to induce a CH and put on the O2 at 15L/min and it didn't seem to do much while I had the mask on. I left in on for 20 minutes and then took off the mask feeling disappointed and low and behold the pain was actually subsiding. Within a couple more minutes the pain was gone and just the pressure at the base of my skull was left.

The next morning I woke up and before I could guzzle my morning espresso drowned in drip coffee I had another one come on. I put the O2 on for 15 minutes, same thing happened. Didn't feel like anything was happening and then the pain was just gone while the pressure remained.

My shadow came and went during the day but the full blown CH never came back. So I'm 2 for 2 now with O2 which is really fucking encouraging!!!!! This is the first couple of days in a while I haven't taken handfuls of ibuprofen.

I'll let you know how things go as they continue and hopefully this cycle will end soon. I've got the Vitamin D3 regimen going strong and am still cluster busting... can't wait to get back to normal life and crack that first cold beer of my remission period.

Cheers fellow CHers.