Well, I was diagnosed today with CH..YAY ME!!

I have been having the headaches for going on 6 weeks, and they ranges from 1 per day to up to 4/day. I did an IV of steroid and another med if forgot but end in kote or something . It seems to do ok, but when I go to lay down to sleep the ice pick jumps back in to my eyeball.

Do you have any tricks to be able to sleep standing up or in a chair????


Also, has anyone had any luck with a chiropractor doing neck adjustments?????

Thanks!

Hi & Welcome to Clusterville

  Sorry you have to be here, but glad you found us.  You've hit the motherlode of CH info/caring/sharing . . . and there's not a drug or therapy or surgery which is not covered for treatment of CH.

  I can't comment on Depakote, as I personally haven't used . . . but more will be along with their experience with same.  Not familiar with the other med you mentioned either.

  There's of host of preventatives, which reduce the frequency/intensity of attacks (I used Verapamil . . . some combine with Lithium or other meds) as preventive and 02 as abortive for the last ten years.  There's a great deal of info on oxygen as abortive . . . BECAUSE IT WORKS for most of us to abort before the "dance" stage.

  After eleven years chronic, have now been painfree since mid-November due to the D3 regimen you can read about on the "Meds, Therapies, Treatments" board, "123 days PF and I think I know why", thread started by Batch.

  Read the links on the left, especially the "oxygen info". 

  You have a great deal of reading to do, but know that the information presented here is done so by folks who truly know your pain and our goal is to get you the best info to take to your doc (or help you find a CH savvy specialist) and see that you get some control over this beast of ours.

  Ask any questions you might have . . . someone here will have some answers for you.

   Be Safe.    PFDANs


      Richard

When you are first starting these meds it may take some dosage adjustments & time for your body to adjust to the med before you can evaluate the effectiveness. And it may be necessary to change a med for we don't all respond to the same meds in the same way.

Communication with your doc is important.

Save our money on chiro. No consistent benefit reported.

For sleep, try OTC, melatonin, 3-5mg before sleep. Cheap and no Rx required.

Ask the druggist if ergotamine SL, 2mg is available. If it is, one taken an hour before sleep is quite useful.

Welcome to the board Mc Butter!

Ask your doc about oxygen, read this link and print out the supporting data to help convince them. 02 is cheap, fast, for me 6-8 minutes, and no side effects. A real game changer for many:

Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or

As to melatonin, we did an informal survey a while back and many go as high as 12-15 mg a night to avoid the beast. Also, some have found relief by splitting their dose in half, half regular release and half slow release. the regular gets them to sleep, the slow release helps keep them asleep.

As to chiropractors, many find they are useful for the secondary issues, the damage you do to shoulder and back while fighting the beast, but any honest chiro will admit they are powerles against the actual CH beast, so yeah, save your money there.

Take a minute and visit our sister board for "alternative treatments" to CH, outside of mainstream medicine. They are putting out some pretty impressive success stories over there:

Clusterbusters.com

Joe