You might want to try Zolmitriptan or Zomig as it's marketed here in Canada and the states.  My husband uses it in the nasal spray form and it aborts usually within 10 minutes in combination with O2.  

We found Imitrex caused him to have way more attacks in a 24 hour period and left him with a lot of side effects.  Zomig is also a triptan but much gentler - lower dose too.  I just checked the box and these sprays are in 5 mg doses, whereas Imitrex was 20 mg (also nasal sprays).  Wonderful stuff - it's become our magic bullet and, at most, Mike only needs to use one a day.  He's been in cycle here since November and is starting to taper down now but, even when he peaked in early January it never got as bad for him as when he was using Imitrex.  Nasty stuff.

Just re-read your second post and although Mike has had some success huffing O2 straight from welders' O2 hose, it was a marked improvement when he went to medicinal oxygen with a non-rebreather mask.  we did need to get a prescription for the mask though (not sure why when you can buy enough Aspirin over the counter to kill yourself but, in Canada, you need a script for the mask AND the oxygen   ). 

I'm not sure how it is in Ireland but you can order these masks online and also EBay - there's a bookmarked post somewhere about them.

thanks for all your replies guys 
I'm finding it hard to get a doctor that understands what my husband is going through - his last doc was giving him nasal sprays that he prescribed to his son who suffered from migranes!!
His new doctor will more or less give him anything that he wants but it's left up to me to do the research on what might work (only from this website did I discover Imitrex and this is his first year using them to great affect thank god).
I will check out the OUCH Uk website and see if I can get a proper O2 mask and tell him to up the dosage he's taking, in the meantime i'm going to try and figure out how to give half injections with the injector pen.

Thanks again for all your help, as always invaluable xx

andyregan wrote on Feb 26^th, 2009 at 1:49pm:


Well, if you mean the doctor doesn't understand the severity of the pain your husband is in... My suggestion? Let him see a full blown cluster. Best way to make a doctor understand...

Bob_Johnson has posted to quite a few folks a list of medications that have been used for this. I don't know if you've come across it, but you may want to PM him and ask about it, print it, and take it to your husband's doctor. If he's not getting some kind of prophylactic treatment, he may want to try it. There's a LOT of things that can be done on that end, it just takes finding the right med.

I also don't know if Lifegas, or the CH.com store ship the masks that're made for cluster sufferers, but if either do, and you have a hard time getting the proper one, I'd suggest going with that.

Some places also sell regulators online if you can't easily get a higher one than 10-12. You might want to get a 25lpm one just in case. A lot of sufferers have had more success with that, than with just 15lpm. Quicker abort times and all...

Anyways, I hope you guys find something that helps soon....
PFDAN
Mystina

Well he tried the imitrex tip, which was quite hard to do (he found it hard to stab his thigh with a needle and didn't really know how far to put it in) but it worked anyway, he reckons it might have took a little longer to work though.
He also tried the red bull which had no affect (other than to gag!)
He's at the docs at the moment to get his blood tested for his testosterone levels - hey anything is worth a shot!