Posted by Todd (216.199.4.241) on January 23, 2000 at 17:21:33:
In Reply to: CH: The condition vs the symptom posted by Q on January 23, 2000 at 16:42:38:
Once again, I find myself compelled to comment on one of your statements.
While YOU may restate drummer's words, I wouldn't be so presumptuous. drummer and I don't always see eye to eye, but I have come to regard him as a pretty fair communicator, at least on the writing end of communication.
I see nothing at all mushy about his thinking.
I see your statement that there is a difference between cluster 'condition' and cluster 'symptoms' as mushy.
Clusterheads seem to have enlarged areas within our hypothalmi. It is currently unknown whether this is a condition we are born with, or one we acquire at some later point in life.
If we acquire this enlargement, it is logical to assume, though certainly not a given, that this enlargement might coincide with the onset of what you refer to as 'symptoms', but which may indeed be the onset of the disorder.
For the record, my first cluster attack occurred in November of 1983. It occurred in LaGrange, Ga. after my ex-wife (then girlfriend) and I returned to her apartment from dinner. It was approximately 7:30 p.m. My second and third attacks occurred at the same time of night on the two subsequent days. After returning to my home in North Carolina the following day, they disappeared for 2 years.
This resulted in an obvious direct cause and effect conclusion on my part. Georgia is the cause of clusters. Subsequent experience has disproven this theory.
I don't have a journal. I do recall my first experience with clusters. I am absolutely positive that I never felt anything like a cluster prior to November, 1983. I also remember the time when I was 8 years old and my cousin chopped my finger off with a hatchet. That didn't hurt like clusters do. Ditto for the time I smashed my finger in the back door of the house and in the door of a 1958 DeSoto.
T