Posted by Hal on March 31, 1999 at 02:14:35:
In Reply to: Re: Misinformation posted by irene on March 28, 1999 at 17:54:38:
Irene,
You're definitely right about the pain aspect.
A major problem is how to describe cluster pain to
someone who's never felt it. For instance, I used to
tell people that it felt like someone jamming the
eraser-end of a pencil through my eyeball to the back of
my skull. Then, one day, just for the hell of it, I
closed my eye and pressed the eraser-end of a pencil
against my eyeball. The result was that I probably
came pretty close to popping my eyeball out of its
socket before I quit and I wasn't even in the same
city with cluster pain, let alone in the same ballpark!
The only way to know what cluster pain is like is to feel
it in your own temple, eyeball, cheek, or teeth. I,
unfortunately, have felt it in all four of these lo-
cations, one after the other, in the course of one
attack. It's impossible to describe this agony to an
outsider. Sufferers can't do it and non-sufferers
can't believe it.