Posted by Laurie (152.163.195.201) on February 03, 2002 at 21:41:28:
In Reply to: need answers.......argghhhhhh!! posted by leeladylee on February 03, 2002 at 10:37:44:
I'm sorry to hear your husband's meds aren't working yet.
One prophylactic med you might research and discuss with your neuro is an antiepileptic drug called Neurontin (gabapentin). I have short (2-3 week) clusters with only sleep-time headaches, and I use bedtime neurontin as my prophylactic. My new neuro is going to try adding verapamil on top of the neurontin for my next cycle, so it sounds like the two are compatible. I'm also thinking it might be compatible with your husband's history of heart problems.
The nice things about neurontin is that it starts providing some protection for me within a couple hours of dosing (for me, it prevents about half my headaches and lowers the KIP of the breakthroughs by a point or two). It also accomplishes some of the things Xanax does--it makes me very very drowsy and a bit smiley, so I'm not so fearful of falling asleep. The drowsiness helps me go back to sleep after my Zomig zaps the breakthroughs. I wonder if this might be useful to your husband until the verapamil kicks in??? (I don't recommend this drug for daytime use because of the common side effects...which wear off in 12 hours).
I start at 300mg a couple hours before bedtime and increase by 100mg a night as I adapt to the med (I maxed this cycle at 900mg), then wean myself off slowly when my cycle ends.
Good luck to both of you,
Laurie