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Cluster Headache Help and Support >> Medications, Treatments, Therapies >> Maxalt http://www.clusterheadaches.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1281744513 Message started by Mike NZ on Aug 13th, 2010 at 8:08pm |
Title: Maxalt Post by Mike NZ on Aug 13th, 2010 at 8:08pm
My neurologist gave me a prescription for Maxalt Melt to use as an abortive, which I thought would be useful as I can easily carry it around in a pocket.
So far, I've used only two. The first time it seemed to do very little until about 20 minutes into a CH (Kip 7) when it seemed to make the CH just vanish, not like the usual fade over about a minute. The second time I used it was Wednesday night on a Kip 10, which was the second worst CH I've ever had. It seemed to have no impact at all, even though the beast had fun with me for about 35 minutes. The next morning I didn't feel too brilliant, although nothing specific. But after lunch I was feeling a bit rough, so I laid down and listened to a podcast. About 10 minutes later I was feeling awful, my heart was pounding like mad, so much so that it was pretty painful and I thought it was going to force it's way out of my chest, which was also feeling tight. I was also short of breath, so in other words, I wasn't feeling too good at all. My better half called an ambulance and I was taken to hospital as even though the ECG looked ok, my blood pressure was sky high (it's normally fine), my pulse was racing, my hands were icy cold and I was also sweating. That was a fun trip as I've enough medical knowledge to know that they were assuming I was having a heart attack, especially when they were giving me an asprin to chew on and spraying nitroglycerin under my tongue (which helped with the chest pain). At the hospital they found nothing wrong, with blood tests and ECG looking normal, although it took a few hours for my blood pressure to return to normal. For now, they are unsure of the cause, with the assumption that it was either musculoskeletal chest pain or a medication side effect. I'm due to have some tests done in the next few days including a treadmill test whilst wired up to an ECG. I've zero history of anything like this, so I'm wondering if it's the Maxalt, especially as the listed side effects include chest pain. Obviously I'm highly reluctant to try a Maxalt again as a CH, even though it can be pretty painful, is a lot easier than a visit to the hospital with a very worried partner (she doesn't deserve to go through that again). What I'm not sure about is the time between when I took the Maxalt, which was just after 9.47pm (my current appointment time with the beast) and the chest pain, which was just after 2pm the next day. Has anyone else experienced anything similar to this? If Maxalt was the cause of this, does it mean I should avoid other sumatriptans, like imigran? I'll be seeing my GP after the weekend, but I'd love to have as much info as I can before the appointment. One side effect of the experience was that I educated quite a few of the medical staff, both doctors and nurses, about CHs. All most of them knew was that CHs were very painful and that was about it. One nurse was really interested and we had a long chat about CHs as I'd told here that I might get a CH at 9.47 and she was all for giving me morphine for the pain. I think that she was disappointed that my preventative worked (or the beast was asleep) as she wanted to see what it was like and how I reacted to the high flow oxygen (she had everything ready). So I'm currently hoping for a less eventful weekend! |
Title: Re: Maxalt Post by Joni on Aug 14th, 2010 at 1:20am
Bless your heart! I have never taken Maxalt, but I know from experience that medications can do very different things to different people. Often, doctors and people have a problem understanding this if it isn't standard or in the book! Good luck to you!
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Title: Re: Maxalt Post by Mike NZ on Aug 14th, 2010 at 6:51pm
Thank you Bob for the very useful info, I'll be using this when I talk to my GP.
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