Posted by John R (209.240.200.152) on November 16, 1999 at 00:51:27:
In Reply to: Cold Air posted by Tony on November 15, 1999 at 12:42:45:
I'm 39 and was chronic from about age 27 until last November when the ch's went away for several months. Unfortunately they came back so now maybe I'm episodic. Anyway, last year I read at this site about a guy that was using his car a/c to abort ch's. I tried it with both my car a/c and at home. I live in Phoenix and today it topped out at 90 degrees so we still have our a/c on.
Anyway, I would stick my head right up to the air vent and even keep my eyes open into the air stream. It would stop the headaches cold (ha, ha), usually within 5 minutes. I was going through a period where the O2 wasn't working. The O2 will stop working for a while now and then during my 12+ yrs of clusters. Then it will start working again. I always use the same technique. It's sort of like the verapamil. When I was still chronic it would work for several month, then the clusters would break through & I'd have to go off of it & switch meds for a while. Then I could go back on the verapamil and it would work. I was on a very high dose of verapamil: 240 mg SR tablets as many as 4 times each day.
I keep getting off the topic of cold air. This year when the headaches got bad in August, the cold air worked pretty well. And it has until about a week ago. It has really only failed once when I used it at onset of pain. It usually works quite well even when I have to go to the thermostat, adjust it down to turn on the a/c, run downstairs & find the stool and the phonebook I put on it so my head will be in the flow of the cold air. But where last year it seemed to work in 5-10 mins, this year it's 10-20 minutes, so the headache gets a lot worse.
Another abortive I use when O2 isn't available is jumping rope, this often aborts the ch as quickly as O2. And when it doesnt, it at least makes the ch drop in pain level several notches. I then alternate jumping with the cold air as long as the headache lasts. Good luck!!!