Posted by Hal on March 18, 1999 at 13:52:04:
In Reply to: Is this a CH posted by Dan on March 18, 1999 at 06:03:52:
I'd be willing to bet a month of pain-free nights
that what you have is cluster. My "diagnosis" is
based on years of agonizing experience. I had my
first cluster episode a couple of months after my
nineteenth birthday. I'm having my current episode
a couple of months before my sixty-second birthday.
Your remark that you'd never felt anything like it
is right on. As far as I'm concerned, that is the
description of a cluster headache in a nutshell:
you've never felt anything else like that pain. As
for the fact that your symptoms may not be "class-
ic," so to speak, well, neither are mine. My eye
doen't tear, my eyelid doesn't droop, my nose does-
n't run, etc. I have no trouble using my computer
or watching TV. On the other hand, I'm so wired
from the pain that I have to be doing something,
even if it's only rocking back and forth and groan-
ing. Those "excruciating, stabbing sensations?" I
know exactly what you're going through, though I
sure wish I didn't! To me, it's like being stabbed
through the right eye with a screwdriver. I can't
help but scream, though I try not to because it's
so hard on my poor, dear wife, who can do nothing
but watch me suffer. It's not strange for the locus
of the pain to change. My first cluster was like a
white-hot ball bearing in the top-right side of my
brain that neither stabbed nor throbbed nor pul-
sated. It just hurt me as I'd never been hurt be-
fore. Nowadays, the cluster pain never feels like
it's in my brain. From one minute to the next, it
can be in my eye, in my cheek, or in my teeth. The
pain builds in slow waves until it reaches a stead-
y, unchanging, agonizing peak punctuated by the
screaming stabbies.
I didn't mean to get so autobiographical, but I
just want to emphasize that we're all in this pain
together, regardless of the exact pattern of our
symptons.
For all of us, it's more hurt for a longer time
than any of us would ever have thought was
possible in our worst nightmares till we lived
through that first cluster and, somehow, kept from
committing suicide.
Welcome to the House of Pain, Dan!