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        New Message Board Archives >> 2006 General Board Posts >> How do you know your cycle is finished?".
        
(Message started by: hellavalife on Oct 25^th, 2006, 1:10am)

Title: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by hellavalife on Oct 25^th, 2006, 1:10am

Hello to all,

Many pain free wishes from Miami, Fl where a cool breeze carrying a cloudless 63 degrees has me actually sitting in my patio with the laptop writing a message to all you fellow clusterheads tonight.

I was wondering since this is only my second cycle and my first was a little over 5 years ago and i just dont remember much about it.

Is there any pattern to a cycle about to finish? In other words do the attack numbers gradually reduce to zero or does the pain level start to drop towards the end of a cycle or do these godforsaken headaches just disappear like a fart in the wind at the end of a cycle? They seem to appear out of nowhere so do they leave the same way?

I do not remember much about my first time but Im keeping very close tabs on this current one. I guess Im just hoping for better things to come so I was wondering. Im only...let me see...actually I'm 12 days into this cycle but i'm already thinking of its end.

Again thanks to all here on this site and all who might respond.

PF days to all
Hector

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by Turts on Oct 25^th, 2006, 1:33am

gday hellavalife,

I have found that my cycles are like my hits

the beginnigs of both start off small, very shadowy, then ramp up to the serious, im gunna smash your skull up from the inside type of deal, and then tapers off again to shadows.

i usually have shadows for about 2 weeks before a cycle of HA begins and then about 1 week after. its a long slow week full of doubt and anticipation that its gone.
intensity increases through a cycle until the peak and then tapers off again.

turts

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by georgej on Oct 25^th, 2006, 1:34am

Hi again, Hector.

About 40 degrees and windy here in Idaho, so needless to say I'm not sitting on the patio.

I'm an episodic clusterhead as well, and have gotten them for forty years. I used to cycle twice a year, spring and fall, for twenty years, until they began to get farther and farther apart. I'm now three years in between for the last three cycles. So I've had somewhere between seventy-five and eighty cluster headache cycles, lasting six to eight weeks each.

For me, they ramp up quickly in intensity and frequency, peak for a couple of weeks, and gradually become less intense and less frequent, until the last few are wimpy little Kip 5's that I can usually sneer at and basically ignore.

I've always considered a cycle to be finished when I go seven days without a hit or a shadow. That's when I take the beer test--if I pass, and don't get a headache, then I'm good to go.

Others wait longer--I know of a number of episodics here who wait thirty days or more until they consider a cycle to be finished. They may get breakthrough attacks for some time after the worst is over.

Your mileage may vary. Only you can discover what the patterns of your cycles are like--we differ quite a bit.

Hope you're out of the woods soon.

Best wishes,

George

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by LadyElaine1 on Oct 25^th, 2006, 11:41am

When I am pain free for a week or two then I figure I won!
I just wait for his next attack. I must be winning, for 20 years I fought him almost every night. Now only a few weeks a year. I GOT HIM ON THE RUN!

When you feel you won its over !

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by Tiannia on Oct 25^th, 2006, 11:56am

I am not sure if I'm much help to you. I am chronic started off chronic andluckly have found some preventatives that help. I still get hit daily, But not the kill me pian with it. I get all the other parts of the headache. The sweats, the redness, the runny nose, and the eye swelling. But when the pain breaks thru I fight it the best I can.

I just wanted to tell you that you will get thru. Take it one day at a time. If you get hit today then fight it and look for tomorrow. If you dont get hit, look for tomorrow as well, as he might sneak up on you, but you will get thru it.

PF Wishes,
Tia

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by KingOfPain on Oct 25^th, 2006, 12:18pm

What cycle?

Oh, this must be an Episodic's thread.

Oops, sorry.

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by rickyshot on Oct 25^th, 2006, 1:35pm

Each person is so unique. Mine start waxing I call it with symptoms of a cold, sinus, earache, jaw pain or all of the above. I start feeling "not right". I get a throat tingle that does not respond to tylenol, or gargarling etc. It stays that way for weeks. I think the symptoms are due to swelling. Unlike some others my worst hits come at the end and my cycles end like turning off the light switch.

All very strange indeed.

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by JimLaff on Oct 25^th, 2006, 3:52pm

Hector - Have you ever seen a fire works display. That is uaually how my cycle will go. A few small ones in the beginning and then they ramp up. At the end of mine I have a grand finally where they will come one after the other within a 2 hour span, all of them kip 10 or better. Then all of a sudden - there gone. ;;D - Hope this helps - Jim

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by thomas on Oct 25^th, 2006, 3:59pm

"How do you know your cycle is finished?".

When the tampon comes out clean.

Sorry, couldn't help myself. ;;D

But seriously, I always use 3 days of complete pf time as a bench mark.

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by Ronny on Oct 25^th, 2006, 5:16pm

for me - and i think it's different for everyone - the time between attacks gets longer and longer.

I do the wine test when i think it's over, i'm always carefull with alcohol. But when i think it's over i drink one or two glasses of wine and wait.

If it doesnt come then, then i consider it as "the end" of that cycle.

Sometimes, even after a month of beeing painfree, the wine test fails.

Ronny.

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by Charlie on Oct 25^th, 2006, 5:38pm

Not unlike Ronny.

Somewhere around a month in, I'd realize that I was getting five hits per day instead of six. At first I would chalk it up to abortives but then a day or two in it would be four or less and then popof! No more. After a week, or so, I could rely on them not returning for several months.

In a way, they sort of "drained" away, much like the end of a hit: Sneakily.

Charlie

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by BMoneeTheMoneeMan on Oct 25^th, 2006, 7:40pm

For me, my cycles dont end like the textbook cases. Research indicates the cycle starts with low frequency and intensity and build over time to high frequency and high intensity, and then deminishes the same way.

My cycles end abruptly. Mine build and build, then, when I am peaking at 7 bad hits a day, it just stops. I go from 7 hits a day to 1 hit a day in just about 3 or 4 days.

B$

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by cosmicfunkfather on Oct 26^th, 2006, 9:55am

I have been dealing with this crap for 20 years. They just pop up whenever they want. The most I ever went PF was for 2 years in those 20. I thought they wouldn't come back then BANG!! I get them every year for 2 or 3 months and 2 to 3 times a day. Had to leave work the other day . . couldn't handle it. Got home, took the trex and it took hours to kick in. . .

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by chewy on Oct 26^th, 2006, 11:41am

Quote:

took the trex and it took hours to kick in. . .

Are you taking the pill form of trex?

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by Tiannia on Oct 26^th, 2006, 2:51pm

If it took hours to kick in there is a chance it was just the end of the hit. I would think. The pills would never help I might as well take an Tylenol.

I know that even as a chronic mine come in cycles. I would just go from getting hit 3 a day up to 7+ a day then back down like a roller coaster that never stops.

now I am not so sure that my preventatives are working cause I am getting hit much more now and I am not sure if they are not working or if it is because I am sick on top of it.

I HATE EAR INFECTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by echo on Oct 26^th, 2006, 3:16pm

I'm hoping my cycle ends when I start my dirt nap.

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by fubar on Oct 26^th, 2006, 3:18pm

Wha? Huh? This ends?

Title: Re: How do you know your cycle is finished?".
Post by DonnaHar on Oct 26^th, 2006, 4:21pm

They ended for me! So yes, there is always hope.

28 years eposodic, cycles for 6 weeks twice a year, started at full speed and ended abruptly, hit usually 3-4 times in 24 hours (one being 1-1/2 hours into sleep). Always 0 to 9 in 5 minutes. Several Kip 10's throughout the years which ended up with me in the ER crying and pleading for help.....which I never got because no one knew what a ch was or how to treat it.

Then, one day in 1986, after a hysterectomy, they just disappeared......so its been 20 pain free years now.

By the way......alcohol was taboo during cycle.....instant cluster headache.