Posted by Jackie on October 03, 1998 at 16:58:37:
I've been having episodic clusters for about 35 years. My
cycle is 1 month every 2 years. This last cycle
supposedly ended 1 month ago. I say "supposedly"
because, for the first time in 35 years, at the end
of the cycle, instead of no more headaches at all, I
started having shadows. I was a bit concerned and
posted here, but it seemed that many of you have shadows
at the end of your cycles. So I felt reassured.
But now, once a week, I've
been waking up with more than a shadow. This has been
happening every Friday night for the last 4 weeks. The
first Friday it happened, I just had mild "weird" feelings.
The next Friday, it was worse. And last night, I had
2 moderate clusters, just as I would have in an actual
cluster cycle, before being in the worst part of the cycle.
The days in between these attacks, I have almost no
problems.
I'm really scared. Could I still be tapering off my
episode, even though once a week I'm getting increasingly
bad headaches? Or could I be becoming chronic? Or
going into another episode? All of this would be
unprecedented for me. I got so anxious last night I
could hardly sleep. I thought, great, I'm becoming
chronic, I don't want to live like this, I won't be
able to go to work, I'll kill myself. These are not
healthy thoughts. And then I'm wondering, could this
change have been precipitated by the sudden death of
my brother 3 years ago, which has been, and continues
to be, a great trauma in my life? Even though, in the
past, I've never been able to connect the clusters to
anything going on in my life.
Does anyone have any similar experience with the clusters?
Any thoughts, advice? Do you know any good doctors in
L.A.? The neurologist I'm seeing doesn't seem to be
particularly knowledgeable about clusters.
Thanks for any comments.
Jackie