Posted by Linda T. (152.163.201.71) on January 17, 2002 at 18:50:25:
and I was pleasantly surprised. I had printed out lots of info from this site and to my surprise, he knew everything without having to be told. I'm definately a clusterhead, oh boy. He's told me that he treats about 3-4 people per year with clusters and I guess that's pretty much since I live in an area of about 30,000 full time residents.
Here is the deal: He thinks prednisone will break the cycle. I started today at 60mg, take 60 mg tomorrow, 50 mg day after, etc. etc. Schedule is for 12 days for a total of 42 10mg pills. In addition, since I'm already on elavil (50mg/day) he wants to wean me off that but thinks I should stick to 50mg/day together with the pred, call him in 2-3 weeks, give results to him and then starting weaning elavil. He also gave me 50mg tablets of Imitrex to abort the attacks and told me that I could take 2 per day. I only have 9. He says relief comes in about 20 minutes. He also gave me 5mgm tablets of Ambien in case the pred keeps me awake. Also, he gave me 20mg of pepcid in case any or all of the above causes stomach upset. To sum up, I'm a walking pharmacy.
I got a good feeling about this guy. He said if the pred doesn't break cycle, he can try depakote and he also named someothers including litium.
Anyone care to comment or make any suggestions. I would welcome any feedback about this course of treatment, i.e. sound ok, bad deal, or whatever.
PF to you all.