telophase | (no subject)

After whingeing about going to see a doctor the next time I had a migranelike headache every time I had one, I finally went to one yesterday. He poked and prodded and questioned and said "hm" a lot and finally decided that I had either a migraine or a cluster headache or possibly a tension headache, that might be caused by that great factor Unknown, or by diabetes, or by hypoglycemia, or by allergies, or by stress. I already knew that I could trigger them by caffeine withdrawal, but I've also had them when caffeine wasn't a factor. SO he gave me samples of migraine meds and painkillers and a scrip for cheap narcotics and said if the migraine stuff worked, then his diagnosis was a migraine, if not then use the narcotics to kill the pain and get to sleep, and come back. :) He also said that if the headaches continued, then once I got real insurance instead of my current catastrophic-only temp insurance I should get it checked out by a neurologist, who could better rule out things.

I believe he thought it might be a cluster headache since those tend to occur on one side of the head, and that's what mine do. He was also intrigued that I found I could usually control the level of pain by eating something and getting my blood sugar up, even when I was having nausea from the headache, which is why he was thinking diabetes or hypoglycemia, I assume.

Anyway, the migraine stuff (Relpax) worked. It comes in a dose of 2 pills to be taken 2 hours apart. THe first pill didn't seem to do anything for almost 2 hours, then it started subsiding, and an hour after I took the 2nd, my headache was *gone*. THere was zero pressure in my head, and I cannot describe the relief involved in the sheer complete and utter absence of pain to anyone who hasn't experienced it. I've got this bottle of hydrocodone untouched now, but I found out online that it's good for coughs, so I shall hoard it against my next bad cold -- I get these horrible, scary coughs that last for weeks and codeine doesn't do a thing for me, so this stuff will be worth a try.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hypoglycemia is getting so common these days, wouldn't surprise me too much if that had a part in it. I can't say I've had personal experience that would support a correlation between low blood sugar and headaches, but it's different for everyone.

Regardless of the cause, hope you feel better and find a way to treat it.

I've always known that if I don't eat I get headachy, but it's usually gone within 30 minutes of eating a meal. It was the 48-hour migraine with accompanying nausea that made the correlation for me -- I hadn't eaten anything for several hours because I was feeling sick, and I forced myself to eat a bit, felt a little better, got worse, ate again... after a couple of rounds of that, I realized that the pain was responding to my eating. It never went away or got down to mild levels, but I could make it go from excruciating to merely unbearable by forcing myself to eat.

The doc wanted to know if I hadn't eaten before the other migraines, or if I felt weak or lightheaded beforehand, but I couldn't remember anything like that, and he thought it might be worth testing my blood glucose levels if they recurred.