Yes, Cluster Headaches.
This morning my alarm goes off at 6:09am of which I could feel the approaching of the common pain in the left hemisphere. I naturally hit the alarm, downstairs, grabbed some water and drank some, ran back upstairs and passed back out, mumbling that I needed to sleep a bit more.
I fiercely woke again at 8:20am with a roaring scream, the pain storming the entire left side of my cranium. I stumbled downstairs and made it into the bathroom, the light piercing my left eyelid and causing me to tilt to port. I threw the hot water on in the shower, stripped down to nothing, and proceeded to sit in the tub while the water beat my hair over my face. I sit for what I felt was an hour in the rushing water, nothing disorientation and water. I managed to gain a moment of reprieve, standing out of the shower enough to dry off and get a new set of clothing on before grabbing some water and bumbling back upstairs.
Lying in bed again, my stomach started to feel. It was a wierd feel, too, and the water I had consumed ended up making it into a bucket beside my bed. Throughout all the pain, stumbling, moving, vomiting, I had passed back out.
WebMD gives it the following helpfulness:
The term “cluster headache” refers to a type of headache that recurs over a period of time. People who have cluster headaches experience an episode one to three times per day during a period of time (the cluster period), which may last from two weeks to three months. People who suffer from cluster headaches get them at the same time each year, such as the spring or fall.
A cluster headache typically awakens a person from sleep one to two hours after going to bed. These nocturnal attacks can be more severe than the daytime attacks. Attacks appear to be linked to the circadian rhythm (or “biological” clock). Cluster headaches can be more intense than a migraine attack but fortunately do not last as long as a migraine headache.
The headaches may disappear completely (go into “remission”) for months or years, only to recur without any warning.
So, that’s it. My “remission” period is gone and my term has started again. I used to track this on a spreadsheet to track the frequency and guesstimate when the next episode was going to be. I had since lost that, which was unfortunate when I went to look for it and found a MOUNTAIN of old google documents that I never remembered.
I had originally blamed my old cigarette smoking habit on the cause of this, but after my 12 April “Stop” date I haven’t consumed any nicotine and have significantly cut down my caffeine intake to the point of “no cream, no sugar, black coffee”.
I even found my injections of Sumavel Dosepro, which should have been discarded on 16 August 2015 after being filled a year before when these Cluster Headaches last came to light. I have 2 full injections of them, and I bought them at $50 each (that’s without copays cause insurance doesn’t cover), and I finally needed them and…..ugh….
Cluster fk’n headaches.