Posted by Jay (jason Gibson) (192.208.46.33) on October 06, 1999 at 03:02:51:
Hi,
Michelle, I just read your reply to my first post so
please forgive me for the late return. Thanks for the
hug! :)
As Austin Powers would say "Please allow myself
to introduce ...uh... myself..."
I am a 28 year old male of ravishing good looks
and a sharp wit! OK, well I really am 28 and male.
The Beast introduced himself to me about 4 years ago, although I wouldn't know him by name until 2 years ago.
For the first two years, my cluster periods were short and infrequent, perhaps 2 headaches per day for a week, 3 or 4 times a year. Then it came. A month
straight, every day...oh the pain. My girlfriend
of the time finally convinced me to see her aunt
(an MD). Upon my first appointment I was astonished
to discover that my blood pressure was 180/120.
Even I knew that for a 26 year old, seemingly healthy
man, this was extreme. Now, the issue of my headache
was put aside as being caused by my HBP. So the
investigation began into why I have HBP. No reason.
Seems to be essential hypertension. Maybe genetic, but
being adopted, I have no way to check on that. So
for six months we really did nothing about my headaches
because we (Dr. aunt and myself) were trying to lick
the BP problem, to no avail. I was still getting the headaches quite often...almost always in the middle of the night, always behind my left eye....runny nostril, droopy eyelid. I think , in retrospect that many
of the meds tried for my BP actually triggered more CH's. Finally, my doctor suggests that what I may
have is a 'rare' condition known as cluster headaches.
She asked me some questions and the answers satisfied
her that yes indeed it was CH. So now what? Seems
the only options my doctor knew of were abortive
treatments and cutting of the congenial nerve(I can't remember exactly the name of that nerve, but I'm sure you all know of it). Apparently, cutting this nerve
would also make my face droop on the left side... no
thanks. Abortive therapy was all I had... demorals and
lots of 'em. One prescription I had was for 100
demorals/30mg. The pharmacist couldn't believe
the prescription and called my doctor. Then the
pharmacist tell me they don't even keep that many in
stock, for fear of robbery. They would order them.
Now, I realized that demoral is basically synthetic heroin and that it would surely be addictive so I
had to find a better way, something that didn't take
20 minutes to work would be great too!
Well, I'll keep no secrets from you people because
I know you understand the pain and that ANYTHING that
might help, short of the 's' word, has to be tried.
I read somewhere that migraine sufferers were
having limited success with marijuana, so I gave that
a shot, as a preventative..hopefully. Well, I have
been smokeing 1 mj cigarette a day for about 1 year
now and I haven't had a headache since new years eve,
which is my longest remission in 4 years. I believe
the headache on new year's was triggered by alchohol
so that was no surprise anyway.
Now, 10 months is not long enough for me to
announce mj as the new CH breakthrough but I truly believe it is working for me.
In fact, I have taken no blood pressure meds for
the past year and my BP hovers around 130/90, much
lower than the meds were able to get it. Now this
could be directly related to the fact that I don't
worry about headaches all day, or it could be the mj,
who knows, who cares..something is working.
The only difficult part
is getting it. I am a systems engineer and I really
don't have too many friends who can supply me. In
fact, I haven't had any in a while and I can feel
the backround pressure behind my eye that is a certain precursor to the damned beast...I'm sort of afraid and that is what has brought me here.
Thank you all for listening and hopefully this will be
the longest post I will have ever written in my life!
:)
Take care
Jay