Posted by gary g (208.133.221.215) on July 26, 1999 at 13:03:36:
In Reply to: Prevention better than pain posted by Laurence on July 25, 1999 at 21:19:37:
very astute of you !
in addition to early action, there is the strange phenom that these things seem to "feed on themselves", even during an fully actualized cluster - the more they get going, the worse they get
NO, that isn't a silly statement -
I find if I can do WHATEVER is necessary to hold off the 7 - 10 level attacks, and WHATEVER is necessary to get rest between attacks, then the overall cluster ends up being milder, in hindsight, than the ones where it gets going full blast because I try to "tough it out" too much/too long
for me - wimping it out actually works, the John Wayne approach is a disaster
re: prevention:
took me years, but finally distinguished my own "early warnig signals"
now, at VERY FIRST twitch, I start loading up on generic benadryl, (diphenhydramine, sp ?) - absolute full labelled dosage allowance - 10 or 12 a day until I am several days clear of any twitches
yah, I get real logy, drowsy & tend to gain weight BUT beats the hell out of a cluster !
and am CONVINCED that MANY MANY clusters have been blocked before getting established that way
there are 1/2 dozen reasons/theories this might work, I'm only please it does
I would say that I "block" OR "postpone" 2 out of 3 clusters that way
NOT BAD !!!!!