Posted by Ken (207.41.16.3) on April 30, 2001 at 14:45:33:
I had cluster headaches from about 14 years old until I was 24. Then I was pain-free for 24 years. About a month ago I was awakened at 2:00am with the most unbelievable pain I had ever had. I honestly thought I was dying with an anurysm or something. Anyway, that started a bout of clusters, with one occurring every night at about 2:00am. These bouts with pain were much more severe than what I had experienced back in my teen-age years.
Fortunately, we have a place to go to locally called the "Headache Wellness Center". These guys don't treat anything except headaches and they know what they're doing. The neurologist verified clusters and put me on Prednisone, Verapimil and Imitrex shots. It took one day for the Prednisone to interrupt the cycle. However, I got brave several days later and drank a couple of beers late in the evening. I woke up at 1:00am with a bad one, but the Imitrex killed it in 10 minutes. Since then I have been cluster-free. I will have to admit that, for the first 8 days of Prednisone, I had lots of shadows hanging around for most of the days. Then, the shadows left and up until today, I have been shadow-free for over a week. However, I woke up with a level-4 shadow this morning and have had it most of the day.
I'm just thankful that I was able to go to a place where they are knowledgeable about clusters.
Ken