Posted by Peteyg (207.38.35.48) on May 04, 2000 at 15:26:15:
Until this morning, I had no idea that there was a connection. This morning my fiance looked at me and said: "Did you know you have sleep apnea when you get your headaches in the middle of the night? You stop breathing."
Blew my mind.
This is my second bout with CH. The first was about 6 years ago, and I had no idea what it was. Went to the Doc, got diagnosed with "Chronic Daily Headaches". After about 2 months they went away, never to return (or so it seemed). Then, about 2 months ago, they started again. I was in the middle of a job change, so I did not have insurance. Finally got my insurance for the new job last week, and went to the doc. He correctly diagnosed me in about 2 minutes, and gave me Verapamil and Prednisone. I'm a little reluctant to take these meds, as I seem to be cycling down from this episode, and do not want to endure side effects unless I have to.
About 3 weeks ago, I though I was gonna kill myself the pain was so bad. Now it's tapering off to maybe only one or two bad ones a day, with a lot of shadowing, bit that's getting better, too. At the peak, I was getting 4 or 5 a day...yuk. They were rolling into each other, and would last forever. The only way I could cope was by taking my migraine meds (Fiorinol). This would knock me out enough to sleep, but I do not believe it helped all that much with the CH pain. I did find that Vicodin knocked ALL pain out within 20 minutes, but I am not all that enthusiastic about taking narcotics to alleviate pain on a daily basis (the cure is worse than the disease...been addicted to heavy stuff in the past...don't want to go back there).
Anyway, this is the first time I have posted here. I love this board. Lots of good support here. Thanks!