The problem with ANY oral medication is it takes too long for the body to absorb it and get it into your system. By the time it hits your system, the heacdache is firmly established and kicking your butt!!

I use cafergot pills, but I use them in combination with oxygen. When an attack starts I pop a cafergot and fire up the oxygen. The 02 beats it down, the cafergot buys me up to 12 hours of relief.

You'll find pain meds aren't effective for CH, the best course of action is to attack the mechanism of the headache. Whether it's an imitrex injection, (my last resort), or breathing pure oxygen, (my first resort and still the most effective for me), you need something that acts fast.

  If you don't have oxygen yet, you need to give it a shot. I can abort an attack in as little as 6 minutes. It's cheap and is having a high percentage of success.

Joe

black wrote on Feb 17^th, 2009 at 3:09pm:



Yes, oxygen.

DHE come in injection form;  A box of five ampules which you put into an insulin syringe and  then give yourself.  At first when I used it, the DHE alone would abort a CH, but eventually that stopped working and I have to use O2 in conjunction.  When I abort a CH with DHE and O2 I am usually free from the beast for at least 24 hours.  You must never use DHE in conjunction with imitrex or any other triptan or it will kill you.

Brew wrote on Feb 17^th, 2009 at 7:08pm:


I have used DHE as an IM  injection for years and my MD JUST told me that it is available as a nasal spray!!!!!!!!
I found that it worked very well to abort my CH's.

Brew, I mentioned the treatment regime you went through to him, but he seemed stumped. Do you have any info/literature to support it that I could bring with me to my next appointment?

TIA

Ergot based drugs should definatly not be used with any triptain.

I used to use a very similar drug over 20 years ago; whilst it did occasionally help notch down the pain it gave me 'spiders' turned the pain into a nueropathic pain beastie that burrowed in ad out of my skin.  Ended up in A&E with a nice doc who used local anthesthetic to numb the whole thing. Read the possible side effects, hopefully they will not happen.

The oral drugs are rarely absorbed for when you need it but might help if you are unlucky and get more than one hit a day; I find the O2 works for the early wake up call and 10am special so I tend to save maxalt [until I do get the imigran jabs!] for the mid afternoon one as by the late evening I am on the floor from tiredness and pain spike bruised feelings and starting to crumble and for me that helps.

The O2 is definatly worth trying and combeined with drugs for those b.a. days.
Do keep talking with your doctor and pharmacist so you can make the best informed choice for you.
Hope you find something that works for you soon.

is it ok to take a DHE pill along with an energy drink at the first sign of a possible crisis??Or is this combination too much??

thanks Brew!
  My heart is fine and i drink fast an(or two) instant coffees along with DHE pill without any problem but i havent got much experience with energy drinks.To tell the truth i have no idea one energy drink and how many instant coffees makes the same value.
I ve found here a cheap brand energy drink and bought some bottles
just in case.Last night got a hit,took the pill but i hesitated in slaming down the energy drink so i preffered again just plain coffee.i dont know if it was just heavy shadow or the pill did something with the coffee but i skipped a crisis anyway

the only bad thing is that i finally manage to get some sleep about 6 o'clock in the morning

and without any cream or sugar it is just instant bliss[smiley=bag.gif]

kika wrote on Mar 11^th, 2009 at 11:25am:

No.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

My experience with DHE was great.

I've been in cycle for 10 months now, and have not slept well for a good long while. I've had no break from the hits... Until the DHE.

I finally was able to enjoy life for a while, get some good quality sleep, have some pain free time. I was only on 0.25ml of the DHE, as I tend to have a lot of allergic reactions. But even that was enough to help me.

I'm on PRN usage of it now. When I need to sleep for a doctor's appointment, or something important, I use it. I'm going to see about getting a higher dose prescribed by my headache specialist in hopes we'll be able to break my cycle with a higher dose.

I tried it sub-q, and IM. Sub-q seemed to hit me faster, but I felt like the IM kept the hits away longer. So I'm using it IM for now.

If you don't have any problems preventing you from using this medication, I highly reccomend it. It was a blessing for me.

washed-out wrote on Mar 28^th, 2009 at 7:13pm:


That wasn't engrishy at all.  Thanks for posting, it reminded me that I should post here too. It being an old medicine just means that it's had more experience.

PFDAN
Mystina