I thought I knew what a Kip 10 was until last night. 2 nights ago I accused my wife of punching me in the head, and it turns out I was having an attack. I've also been getting the aura during the night, though I keep thinking it's my dreams, as it's actually just affecting my dreams. Last night at 12:45 (amazing how we know the times), which is actually about :45 minutes early, I woke up screaming with the worst pain I ever experienced. Luckily for me, it was only about 2 minutes in duration, and the next round about 5 minutes later was much less severe and slowly reduced over the next half hour or so.
On a side note, I'm waiting on test results on my updated Calcium and D levels, as I had high calcium and low D 6 months ago. Similar or worse results may explain increase in head pain, but who knows.

Ouch. Hoping that was a one-off for you. I've occasionally had those out of the blue, super-bad hits. I never did track down a pattern. How are you doing today?

Hi mike!
Sure hope everything is better with you and you haven't gotten another like that!!!!
I defiantly think that the vitamin D levels play a big part in our pain! Have noticed a big difference since I started. Batches vitamin regimen and upped my vitamin D and Calcium intake. Have been going three to four weeks at a time with pain free days and when I do get pain it usually turns out to be a kip 1 or 2.
All best wishes for pain free days for you!!!!

Hey Mike, I've had a couple of those screamers and they were horrible. Two of them sent me to the hospital for DHE IV plus stuff. They were isolated incidents and the remainder were the usual torture...lower level and painful, but not a screamer. I pray you get these under control. God bless. lance

So I got my bloodwork back, my calcium is normal 9.9, and my D came up to 82, so the 10,000 IU of D is working, as last time, I believe it was around 32. Of course, this begs the question as to why my headaches are getting worse, which seems to simply be, CH. I took a Sumavel shot last night, so I was spared the searing pain at 130AM, which is good, even though I wanted to vomit all night from the triptan reaction. take the bad with the good, I suppose.

Mike Bernardo wrote on Aug 24^th, 2012 at 10:17am:

So I got my bloodwork back, my calcium is normal 9.9, and my D came up to 82, so the 10,000 IU of D is working, as last time, I believe it was around 32. Of course, this begs the question as to why my headaches are getting worse, which seems to simply be, CH. I took a Sumavel shot last night, so I was spared the searing pain at 130AM, which is good, even though I wanted to vomit all night from the triptan reaction. take the bad with the good, I suppose.

Hey Mike...do you have a thyroid condition

No, everything else we've checked came back normal. I even have had several scans over the last year and no tumors or growths were there.

Mike im sorry you sound like me =( are you chronic? what preventatives do you take? i see you take sumavel/ side effect sucked for me, vomiting, upset stomach, i don't know about you but all triptains cause me to have massive panic attacks. so my doctor no longer thinks its a good idea for me to take them. have you tried DHE. its good but pretty pricey depending on insurance coverage. less nausea for me at least. everyone different tho. good luck hopefully you don't get anymore of those nights when i get them like that and i really do get them like that 2 or 3 nights a week i will try my oxygen for about 15-20 mins with a bag of frozen peas on my head then i normal get pissed and start throwing up and sit in my bathroom with the shower running really hot so it steams the bathroom up with the frozen peas and will try and cope. Some time that mix will work. Not sure why. if it last over 2 hrs and i cant cope and am continuously throwing up i have to go to the hospital because at that point DHE intramuscular and Sumavel are no use i need it threw IV

Im not sure if I'm chronic. I guess I may be. 300mg topo now. I've tried it all except lithium which is next. I run a lot to help. I hate the O2. The sumavel shots suck too. Heat kills me. I take a clonazapam and that helps too. It just gets worse.  Has been over the last 6 months and the nights are obviously the scariest.

Mike,
   
On a lighter note, your avatar and post reminded me of a weird "cluster dream" from several years back....
   
I was dreaming that I was Luke Skywalker at the very end of "Jedi", where the emperor keeps frying him with force-lightning.  In my dream the lightning kept surging through my head and my face and it was agonizing. 
   
I woke up to find that I was not, in fact, in the throne room of the Death Star.  I was in my bedroom and in the midst of a gnarly hit.
   
-Ken

Have to butt in. A 10 is a 10..snot flingin headbanger praying for death. I suppose if thats the worst pain you ever felt you would have to reset your kip clock..lol Hope you dont have to reset it ever again. Sleep is for other people.. ;)
tachead

Yeah it's reset. 10 is now 10. I hope it doesn't get reset again. I do need my sleep. I start lithium this week. 600mg for a month. Then 1200 mg.

I'll never have a "New Kip 10". That would be insanely painful (and probably dangerous) to put it lightly. Not sure I'd make it.

Good Luck to us all !

I4B

Both of the 10's I've had also sent me to the hospital for IV DHE-45 treatment.

Best thing that can be said about a 10 - things ALWAYS got better from that point.

A 10 is relative to the most pain each of us has ever experienced. It is fact that few ClusterHeads have had a real Kip-10. My first 9 yrs of CH, I would tell you I had many K-10's. Then I had the real thing, sent me to the ER, asking for a CT scan.

The worst of a 10 for me is the thoughts of "I can't take this, I'd rather die." Then after the attack has slowed I find it won't leave for many hours. I use a lot of O2 during this time. We've nicknamed this the "afterburn". Only O2 helps me get thru this.

Any CH Kip# is bad, knowing the "Kip scale" gives us good guidelines that all CH'rs should know. Accepting that you may not of had a K-10 is optional.

Don

The description I have for a Kip 10 is "Major pain, screaming, head banging, ER trip. Depressed. Suicidal.".

I've had one and it was before I'd got oxygen, so I was there for the full 90 minute ride to hell and back. There is just no real way I can describe what the pain was like other than it was worse than any other CH I've ever had and then it just got worse and worse and worse to a whole new level. It was beyond description that would make not make sense to anyone who had not experienced it.

I can remember my supporter, worried sick, even though she was by then used to seeing me in the middle of a CH, trying to call for medical help just to have them refuse to do anything for just a "headache". But for most of it I was just a mess, nose running like mad, endless tears, restless beyond description and totally incapable of doing anything but trying to get through, willing to do anything to end the pain, even though unable to do anything resembling a controlled movement.

It's somewhere I never, ever want to visit ever again. Luckily with oxygen I've been able to abort CHs before I get remotely near that place again.

Surviving a Kip 10 makes me think I'd survive an encounter with a Gom Jabbar which fans of the book (and film) Dune will know all about - START PRINTPAGEMultimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or END PRINTPAGE.

I thought I had a few K10s last year. this recent one, though, was something that I swear I thought was maybe a stroke or that I had been shot in the head, particularly given the types of nightmares I have due to the pain I experience in my sleep (I'm a very, very heavy sleeper, and the pain causes me to have nightmares, rather than wake up right away). when I finally did wake up from the pain, lets just say, I had a cystoscope done with no drugs (you know, a scope of the man-parts) and this was 10x worse.