Posted by Brenda (209.130.166.211) on October 20, 2000 at 21:38:46:
I am looking for spouses of CH sufferers. I have been with my husband for over 8 years. We have gone through a lot together, but his headaches are by far the worst. My family doesn't understand the pain that is a nightly ritual in our house. Our children are our lives, but when he gets a headache he becomes very short with them and that's when I have to take our oldest child for a drive until the headache is over. My husband has tried countless different meds, been to see numerous different doctors over the past 7 years, and I have gone with to 90% of the appointments. He's been told that the headaches that he has were from hyperventilating because there are times when his body will become numb on one side, the doctor didn't listen that he had the headache prior to hyperventilating. What are these doctor's thinking? Finally about a year ago he was diagnosed with CH. We were relieved and scared at the same time. Because we went through all the CT scans and MRI's and didn't get anywhere. We went to a few neurologist who did narrow it down to some sort of a headache and started to prescribe medications just to see what worked, then they would tell us a type if they found one that worked. I just don't know how many more of these I can handle. Maybe it's just the past 4 nights of little to no sleep talking. I end up in the family room with him every night just watching him beat himself and cry, just hoping that this one goes away soon, and feeling more helpless then I have ever felt because I know that there's nothing I can do other then stay out of his way, and jump everytime he says that I can help him with something. Eventually he becomes so exhausted that he has to sit down, the headache starts to go away and eventually he falls asleep. For the next hour I watch him breath, not wanting to make a noise, if by chance we do get through an hour without another headache I know that it is safe to wake him up and go up to bed. If the hour doesn't go as well we start the whole process over again. I am just looking for someone to talk to about these and how you cope.