Posted by John Reynolds on September 14, 1998 at 06:17:02:
In Reply to: Oxygen and Cold air together--very quick stop! posted by John Reynolds on September 14, 1998 at 01:53:39:
I forgot to mention that this last week the oxygen by itself quit working altogether...until now, that I combined it with the cold air. So I don't need to BREATHE the cold air. Just have it blowing on my face while I breathe the oxygen.
I guess after the weather cools I'll be out in my car with my o2 tank and the air cranked down at all hours of the night. At least 2 others use their car a/c and that works fine.
It's now 2:40am and the cold air/o2 combo has worked on about 4 headaches tonight. The 1st was about 10:25pm.
I'm still working on finding a good preventative. Maybe the diflucan does work better if you do the anti-yeast diet for a week first. I'm still getting up each morning to sit in front of the full-spectrum lights. I'm going to keep on the diflucan for a couple weeks if I tolerate it well. I'm going to start taking melatonin 9 mg an hour before bedtime tomorrow night (I understand it can cause one or two blow-out long miserable headaches before it kicks in and helps a lot.) I'm also going to keep using the capsaicin nasal spray a few times each day to try to overwhelm the p1 nerve endings (or something like that). (Thanks, again, Alex for that info. I know you use a DROP of 0.075% capsaisin, but even though this nasal SPRAY is 0.015% capsaisin, the spray REALLY gets it up in there and it burns well for a good 5 minutes (capsaicin pain is about a 0.1 if a bad cluster is an 8.0).)
I used to try to distinguish which treatment was effective by only doing one new thing at a time. But I'm really tired of these headaches and want to get off and stay off the other drugs and their side effects: prednisone, verapamil, sansert, imitrix, DHE, etc.
If what I'm doing now doesn't work, I'll try to find an ear-nose-throat doc or neuro to give me an SPG block again (an ENT used a long bent needle to inject a mixture I think of lidocaine and some steroid or something--sounds a lot like one of the procedures DJ's Doc mentioned in the FANTASTIC info that he linked to the homepage of this site)...he injected the mixture up into the spheno-palantine ganglion (SPG) through the gum behind the molars on my headache side (right). He warned me that it might cause temporary blindness in my right eye if he got too close to the optic nerve (that never happened in the half-dozen times I saw him over a year or two--this was about 10 years ago so it's hard to remember all the details).
This definitely caused a blow-out headache that night, but I was then totally free of headaches for a period of from a week or two to about 3 mos. The final time he did the SPG block it didn't work at all. I was going to give it some time and try again, but the doctor had moved out of town. Those times with the SPG block have been the only times I've not had daily headaches without daily medication since they began 12 yrs ago.
Boy, once I start rambling in the middle of the night there's no stopping me.
Good night/morning, all. Death to clusters!!!