Posted by pat (195.121.167.50) on February 17, 2000 at 01:25:03:
This message is written on my personal experience and I have no intension to give anyone false hope.
I develloped cluster headaches two years ago and had all the classical symptomes, including the ones mentioned on this site. Slowly the clusters progressed to a chronic one and I don't have to explain the pain and agony to you people. Two months ago I went to my GP and asked for a MRI because I felt that the severe attacks were damaging my brains. Anyway, that was done and the result was the discovery of a tumor on the hypofyse. This is ofcourse bad news but to me it was a relieve, because now you new what the reason for the headaches were. I had to do bloodtest and they found that my prolactinelevel was 80x the normal level.
My specialist in hospital gave me PARLODEL, to reduce that level and after three weeks the prolactinelevel dropped 80% and my headaches are reduced to, a few a week. That is a big difference to several attacks a day. I realise that there is a long way to go and a operation in the long run is still a option, but I can tell you that I'm extremely happy with this devellopment and life is totally different now. I want to thank everyone for the support I received over the last two years and hope that despite the terrible pains and lack of understanding clusterheadaches by the overall majority, no one will give up hope. Hope for relief, hope for a sollution. Thanks Patrick