Posted by gary, one of ye aulde pharts at CHMB (208.133.221.194) on January 05, 2000 at 17:23:10:
just thought i'd take a sec to toss this out to new folks (either to CH, CHMB or both)
for extensive material on most of this, take some time and go thru all the link buttons on the left of the CHMB screen
Nearly all of us have tried nearly everything available, at one time or another, and after you've read a few score thousand of these posts, a few things seem pretty clear - as generalities:
1. Different things seem to work for different people, at least that is what they report. BUT there doesn't seem to be any "unusual" item that works real well for just a few people - the good results also seem to be effective for the majority
3. There ISN'T anything (yet) that reliably, consistently or repeatably will completely stop the whole cluster cycle - different medicines are used with claims they reduce the frequency of attacks in a cycle, but for the life of me I don't see how anybody can accurately document a partial effect, because the disease is so variable to begin with
4. There ARE several treatments that help or stop the individual attacks
The only ones that seem to be nearly universal are:
a. pure oxygen, 8-10 liters/minute, nonrebreather mask, at VERY FIRST sign of attack
b. imitrex injectable, at 1\3 - 1/2 the labelled dose for migraine
(the disease for which it is marketed and labelled)
c. cafergot (generic: ercaf)same as O2 - need to take immediately at first sign of impending attack (serious side effects possible - read all labelling carefully !)
Hope that helps someone cut through endless rounds of fruitless "experimentation".