Thanks, everyone, for your input. I've been on the Topamax for almost two years now and haven't really thought much about the headaches until recently. I've been contemplating going off of the Topamax only because I am one of those people who hate taking drugs, but I thought I would try and understand my headaches better before I did that. I would much rather continue taking the drugs until the day I die than go back to the pain that I endured for 10+ years with those headaches.
I never got an MRI or any sort of scan for my headaches. By the time I sought out medical assistance for them, I figured if it was some sort of brain tumor or other such unsavory disease, I would have been dead long before I made my appointment with the doc. I suffered with them for so long because when I was a kid, my dad had the same exact types of headaches, and I had remembered that all the doctors ever did was give him more painkillers and shoot him full of demoral (sp?) so many times he's immune to it now. I just figured the doctors couldn't do anything for me.
Then, when my nurse prac. sent me to that stupid 'headache specialist' who dismissed me as a whiny woman, I felt my suspicions about the medical community were confirmed. My nurse prac. convinced me to try the Topamax thinking I was having migraines, but at least she acknowledged I was in some serious pain. But whenever I talked to migraine sufferers, I never really felt these headaches were the same, you know?
In the 10 years before I sought medical assistance, I tried physical therapy, massage, eliminating caffeine, different types of supplements, changing my pillow (at least 20 times), getting a $500 bite guard from the dentist, getting my wisdom teeth removed (my dentist felt that was the cause of my headaches), regular exercise, changes to my diet, various OTC pain medications (excedrin was my drug of choice, which I think was causing some rebound headaches in addition to the demon headaches), using alternating hot and cold compresses (usually consisting of the hottest shower I could stand on my head, followed by ice directly applied to the most painful spot on my head), beating my head on a wall, tearing my hair out (or at least trying to), and crying uncontrollably until the pain went away.
I will look into the information you all gave me. Thanks again for giving me the most important thing: validation. Especially the part about 'not only men get these'. I find that EVERYWHERE I look regarding these headaches, and I think that does tend to stop doctors from even considering them in women.