Cluster headache help


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Posted by Char (205.188.193.157) on January 29, 2001 at 17:48:16:

I'm so happy to have found this site. I'm not the sufferer from CH, but my fiancee is. After a weekend of hell, we spent another morning at the doctor's office.

He has had CH since he was 19, and the treatment up to this point has been less than adequate. After years of narcotics, he finally found a neurologist a couple years ago that prescribed Imitrex shots and Midrin. We met eachother at a point in time when he was having no problems. December trhough March seem to be the worst. About 8 months after we met he began having problems again, and was eating the midrin like candy. I'm an RN, and knew that the tylenol in those wasn't good for his liver. We found another physician who prescribed Imitrex nasal spray and injection, as well as 80mg of Inderal LA daily. This seemed to stop the cycle that he was in last year. Unfortunately this year, that same combination is not helping. After watching this man suffer for the last several weeks, I very quickly figured out these wern't the typical "Migraines" that he had been diagnosed with. I did a lot of research, and learned that the cluster headache diagnosis was more the direction we needed to go in. The physician was reluctant to increase the Inderal, and only offered the addition of Maxalt-MLT. This did not help, and only ended up with myself trying to figure out how much medication we really could use without adverse effects. At one point this weekend we had used 3 1/2 Maxalt, 3 Imitrex nasal sprays, and 12mg of Imitrex injection within 48 hours. I know you're not supossed to use the imitrex within 24 hours of the Imitrex, but I know everyone here understands the situation these headaches place you in when it's someone you love.

The trip to the physician was somewhat helpful. We are going to use the Imitrex injection exclusively, continue with the Inderal LA at 80mg (he is keeping the mg low because of his weight, 108#). I talked about some information that I had read here, and he agreed to add Prednisone. He started him on 80mg, titrating to 10mg over the next 9 days. He also added Zoloft. I'm wondering what success others have had with Zoloft. We're exhausted after the weekend, and really don't know where to turn next.

Thanks for any information that you can give.

Char




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