Hi Everyone,

My name is Kelly and I'm from Trinidad and Tobago (the caribbean). I'm 22 and have suffered with constant headaches for the past five years. I was always told maybe it was a tension headache or migraines and was never taken seriously. With more severe headaches however, I decided to get an MRI done, mid last year to be exact. It showed that I have  a Rathke's Cleft Cyst, located next to the pituitary gland. My neurologist decided that it wasn't  a threat however and although headaches are a symptom I still couldn't get an answer.
When I began describing my headaches to him, he diagnosed it as Cluster headaches, not giving me much information however and putting me on Verapomil.
I took the pills twice a day for about three weeks until I started noticing bruising throughout my body. When I contacted him I was told to stop the medication right away.
I have headaches every single day, maybe able 4-5 on a good day and anywhere up to 10 on a bad day. My attacks are very painful and my only relief is to hit my head in the area in which I'm getting the pain. My best way to describe it is that it feels like someone is stabbing me in my head.
On monday night I had a bad attack which left me exhausted and took me an entire two days to recover, with headaches present. It's Thursday night and since the attack on monday my left eyelid has been twitching constantly (CH was on my left side). My eyes have always been watery, my vision has gotten drastically blurred with in the recent years, sudden light or bright lights cripple me and I feel like there is something behind my eyes waiting to pop. I never have headache free periods.
I'm seeing another neurologist on the 21st of this month hoping for a treatment that will help. However, Trinidad is very small and cluster headaches are very well known, I'm hoping he will prescribe Oxygen as that seems to be most effective but for some reason they all seem to think that cluster headaches aren't serious. I will take everyone's advice and print out the related research but I feel as though that may not even work. I've looked into oxygen machine's on amazon but they're quite expensive and because I'm not sure what I'm looking for makes it even harder.
I'm a special education teacher so I'm always in an extremely noisey setting and I'm also pursing my Master's Degree so I'm always behind a laptop/computer.

I don't know how much longer I can cope with these headaches as they truly are the worst. I have a very high pain tolerance and try not to complain to stress others out so I usually try to deal with it by myself. What makes it worse is that no one seems to think they're that serious.

This site has helped me so much!

Kelly x

Welcome Kelly. On the left side of your screen is a 'cluster quiz' button. Please take the quiz and let us know your result.
Many or your statements seem, to me but I'm not a doctor, not to point to cluster headaches. Does your new neurologist specialize in headaches? It is important to find a well trained headache doc.