Posted by drummer on May 25, 1999 at 08:03:18:
OK here goes. First the gender thing. Looks like 1 in every 4 people that have clusters are female. This, however, makes me wonder how many females are at migraineheadaches.com and are actually suffering clusters. How many Doctors are miss-diagnosing female patients because of the myth that this is predominantly a man’s condition?
Second; age. Most people are between 30 years old and 49 years old. Possibly there are more people over 50 years old with Clusters, but they do not have a computer. I know in terms of people that I work with that most of the over 50 crowd do not own a computer.
Third; age first “hit” with a cluster attack. Most are between the ages of 20 and 39. I have no explanation other then the Demon likes to try and ruin people’s lives at a young age.
Fourth; eye color. I believe this to be meaningless. I think if someone polled all the people that have stubbed their toe; that you would come up with the same statistic of varying eye color.
Fifth; number of years suffered from clusters. Most people picked (21+ years). This is depressing. Seems like there is no end in sight.
Sixth; medical trauma. I love this statistic and I hate it at the same time. I love that the answer seems to be a resounding NO! I hate it because it confirms that there is no good reason for us having this God-awful condition.
Seventh; clusters in the family. 85% say no. I’m happy that the odds are good that my beautiful, intelligent, innocent daughters who I love with all my heart, will probably not get this “fucking curse”.
Eighth; episodic or chronic. Most are episodic. I am chronic. I am happy that you episodic people have some time in your life when there is no pain. As for you chronic people. “Welcome aboard”! Feel free to E-mail me and tell me how pissed off you are that you cannot be like the episodic people.
Nine through twelve. No matter if you are episodic or chronic the headaches are mainly random. This sucks for all of us because you never know when the Demon will decide to take time away from your life.
Thirteen; left side, right side or both. Who cares! No matter which side is affected; it hurts like hell!
Fourteen; sleep as a trigger. Sleep seems to be a bad thing to do. I think here, we are all pretty much screwed.
Fifteen and sixteen; smoking and drinking. These two things have nothing to do with anything. Smoke? Clusters! Don’t smoke? Clusters! Drink? Clusters! Don’t drink? Clusters!
And last but not least; medications. Most of us love our Imitrex and Oxygen. We probably carry these things with us at all times. As far as a preventative? Seems like “nothing works”. I fear that there is no hope in stopping these clusters.