Posted by becky (213.122.16.132) on November 27, 2001 at 18:23:22:
I haven't read any of the other messages, so if I am repeating anything already written, I'm sorry, but just reading other pages on this site has upset me so much, I can't. I am not normally that emotional, believe me. I suffered from cluster headaches from the age of 15, diagnosed then as facial neuralgia. Then at 25 they vanished. I thought they were gone, I really did - I was told by my Dr when I was 22 that they were migraines (cluster migraines he called them) and that they could disappear and never come back. He was wrong wasn't he? I woke up the night before my 31st birthday, two and a half weeks ago with the worst I've ever had, and had them every night since, I can't bear it, I can't bear to go through all that again, not for the rest of my life. I've been given a triptan drug by my Dr, but it doesn't work. I've been surfing the net and read everything i come across, however tenuous, to do with cluster headaches, and there is no cure, is there? There is nothing I can do. I spent 10 years trying to figure out what caused it - any common link, anything at all I could avoid or I could do to stop them, and there isn't anything. I am exhausted, I feel like I haven't slept at all for two weeks. And it all comes back - people's reactions, however much they love you, that really it is just a headache and if you relaxed a bit, or stopped smoking, or took more exercise they'll go. No one really understands, especially not at work, there's only so many times you can use it as an excuse for looking and feeling knackered and not being able to concentrate before people lose sympathy (which I understand, I do, which is why I don't talk about it). So I'm sorry to go on, and I don't expect a reply - you presuamably all feel this way anyway, and it's all so much whinging self pity, but just to say all this out loud, as it were, to people who actually know, does help. OK, I feel a bit better now, but I'm still not going to go to bed...