Posted by Matt (212.187.37.2) on October 19, 2000 at 11:58:13:
In Reply to: WARNING TO EVERYONE. posted by Luke on October 19, 2000 at 02:34:09:
Dear Luke,
First of all thank you very much for your message. I must reply now because your story sounds a bit the same as mine except other drugs were involved. I am a male 30 Yrs old and I am familiar with Ch since I was 16. I think I am a typical CH patient as in my early 20's the CH became more regularly and more into the "open". I have done a lot of reading in books and on internet and it seems there are many more people (males) with the same story i.e CH will develop to present itself very nasty (?) when in 20's
(attacks become more frequent (instead of only at night when alone in bedroom) and also in "important" hours like when having "social activities" so you can't hide your "disease" anymore and people notice there is something "weird" about you.
My story goes like this when I was your age:
(sorry for writing like that I am still young only 10 years older than you)
I also was attending college and I had the headaches more frequent. MY housedoctor thought I was depressed, (and so did I) so I went to psychologist.I took anti depressant several of them (seroxat, prozac and some others and I do NOT recommend them to anyone with CH!) I experienced then the same effects you describe like not knowing what I did short before. Not remembering where I put things so looking for it for hours and so on and so on. Very worrying symptons for myself.
Beside psychologist I went to neurologist who introduced me with sumatriptan (imitrex/imigran)
which made a end to pain after short time and also was very strong evidence for diagnosis Clusterheadache.
Now looking back at that time I have feeling there were more things like CH alone.
First, I was young, going to college trying to achieve something in live just like everybody else. Then these bad understood terrible headaches came and went away after a while and no doctor seemed to understand. Ofcourse I had depressions and anxiety. To me now it is logical because I was young, I was expected to make same achievement as people of my age and I was facing a disability with no name at that time. For me it took quite a long time to understand what was happening to me and also to find good treatment i.e preventative medicines that work!!!
I still find it difficult to deal with the CH but I accepted them as being a part of my live.I did not finish college because it was too much stress for me because I missed several periods because of not sleeping, headaches,lack of concentration etc etc and I went working instead after a while and always found a job which satisfies me a little and made me financially independent and put me more out of sight of the normal "ratrace" my friends where in. I did this all myself to protect myself against meself. I mean if I tried to live a live people expected me to and when there is a lot of competition I think that I would have "killed" a competitor or would have killed myself because of me suffering CH so it is selfprotection and I found peace with it.
Today there are still people thinking of me "wasting my intellect" and dont understand my life althus suspecting me of being strange or druguser. To them I say FUCK YOU. Sometimes I have thoughts about looking at people who said "wrong" things about me and to me, when they are in pain and then me being total have opinion ready about them and humanly disconnected and saying to them "come on be a man! dont be sissy"
Well that is all. It is a long hard road out of hell but I am sure you will survive because least of all CH is harmless to your body it causes no fysical damage.
I hope things will go well for you.