Posted by Jackie on April 15, 1999 at 11:54:03:
I've decided I need a personality transplant to deal with all the anxiety I'm feeling over these clusters. I need the personality of someone low key, upbeat, who doesn't worry.
I've been having this anxiety since my pattern switched from episodic clusters, which I've had for 35 years (1 month every 2 years), to what seems to be chronic. I've been in a cycle now since August 1998.
I should be grateful that the Verapamil is mostly working. And I am. But it's the "mostly" that's getting to me. Sometimes I have mild breakthrough headaches that wake me up at night. Or I have heavy feelings in my head. Or tingling. There's all kinds of stuff going on in there. And when the stuff happens in the middle of the night, I can't seem to turn off the anxiety. I'm not getting very much sleep, so I'm bone tired. Today I'm actually feeling ill. I could deal quite well with my clusters when they were episodic. I figured that no matter how bad they were, they would end in 1 month. But this is a whole other thing. Some days I wake up and I'm so depressed I just want to die. Then other times, I think, I have a wonderful husband and I'll just keep fighting and life is always worth living, etc. The amount of fight I have in me seems to be related to the amount of sleep I have in me.
Anyhow, I'm grateful for being able to rant here. Is anyone else dealing with something similar?
Take care, everyone,
Jackie