Today marks the fourteenth or fifteenth day in a row of waking up with a splitting headache. This isn’t a completely new experience - I’ve had chronic headaches since I was in the third grade, and I’ve long since gotten used to living with them. Usually a few Excedrin will let me get on with my life.
But lately, man. They’ve been just beastly. It’s like a (insert your favorite simile about power tools inside the skull here), and Excedrin barely takes the edge off. Even that I could deal with - I have before. Usually they go in waves, like a few days of headaches followed by a few weeks without, but it’s every single day now. This type of headache usually comes from messed up sleep patterns, so I don’t know if it’s the heat that’s making it tough to sleep, or having the baby wake us up in the middle of the night, or what, but it’s getting really old.
To top it off, Excedrin has side effects on me. If I take enough to really function well, it leaves me a little shaky and light-headed. Not to mention having to pee every ten minutes from the caffeine.
So screw you, brain. If you weren’t so incredibly brilliant, I’d be seriously displeased with you.
(I refuse to apologize for not meeting some imaginary BBQ Pit requirement for sufficient anger, but if the mods want to move this to MPSIMS, I don’t really care)
That sucks. I’ve had chronic headaches in the past (although not as bad as yours sound) and I know how wearing they can be.
My advice is the obvious - see a doctor. If you’re lucky, your headaches may have some simple cause which you can easily address and they’ll be gone. (Maybe it’s just caffeine withdrawal.) And if it doesn’t have a simple cause, you’re better off finding that out as well.
Little Nemo said it: see a doc. Something is suddenly different, and that’s worth looking into. If nothing else, get some prescription meds that do better for you than Excedrin.
I had a brief problem with headaches a few years ago, and got a prescription for Midrin. Good stuff. After a few weeks I figured out that the headaches were due to having switched to a tasty new brand of coffee, Douwe Egberts. switched back to my old brand, and the headaches stopped within a few days.
I should have mentioned - I’ve been through the doctor thing in the past. I’ve had every test known to man, and been on many different kinds of medication. Nothing helped. This is old, old news. My health insurance sucks so badly that I couldn’t afford to go through all that again. I’ll also add that they’re NOT migraines, because headache threads tend to bring out the migraine sufferers.
My sympathies. I get one or two headaches a month, and that’s plenty for me. My favourite things are reading books and reading the Dope - two things that are hard to do with a pounding headache.
ETA: There was a painkiller thread in GQ a week or so ago, that suggested Tylenol and Advil can be mixed and matched for better results (take two Tylenol, take two Advil two hours later and stagger them like that). I haven’t tried it yet with a killer headache.
I’ve struggled with migraines, and I’ve struggled with headaches. Totally different critters, they are. I would like to suggest, if during your ‘every test known to man’ you happened to skip allergy testing, that you go as soon as possible. I had a headache for about four years. Really. There would be hours of relief here and there, but I was miserable. Finally went for allergy testing, and it turns out I’m allergic to literally everything around me (and I have the PFT scores of a “very small child”). Three allergy meds and two asthma meds later, and BLISS.
Also, caffeine withdrawal is a viable suggestion. It’s mindblowing how much caffeine is in Excedrin (which is why it works on your headaches). Drug rebound is a genuine problem, especially for those of us who are forced to self-medicate with OTC stuff.
Get your ghod damn ass to a doctor now. Ain’t got money? Go to a free clinic or an urgency care clinic at your local hospital. The headaches are worse, constant and longer lasting, and this is no time to be futzing around with home remedies.
Not too long ago, I had pretty much the same symptoms, and the doctors did a casual check and didn’t find anything. I collapsed one night at work, thankfully near the only other cow-orker on duty that night, and got rushed to the hospital. The doctor asked if I had hit my head, because the right side of my brain had swollen up so bad they needed to cut me open immediately.
End result-they took enough of my brain out that you can hear a slight hollow sound when you tap the right side of my forehead, I’m missing memories I can’t ever get back, and I had to relearn how to walk.
You might try massage therapy. Stress can cause some major headaches.
Make sure you get someone who knows how to work on headache sufferers. I found one, and in two sessions he did more for me than years of chiro, muscle relaxants, and Excedrin.
That’s really scary. Do they know why it happened? I hope everything is okay now.
Smeghead, have you tried Maxalt? There are new meds out that could help you. I understand the frustration. It took me four years of misery before I found the miracle med.
I have had a headache and a migraine at the same time. The medication that makes one go away won’t take care of the other. And when one goes away, the other can remain.
You need to go back to the doctor and not take no for an answer. Insist on being referred to a specialist. This sounds like classic cluster headaches, but it could also be something even more serious.
After struggling with migraines fro years I have found that having exactly two cups of coffee in the morning, no more, no less, keeps me headache free. I also have Immitrex for those now rare times they come back. You might also want to ask about ergotamine, like LSD it dilates blood vessels.
Getting the right doctor is key. Some are just better than others.
As a chronic headache sufferer I finally came to conclusion that mine were caused by mild dehydration. When I am in a more humid climate (I am in Denver), or when I take care to make sure I am well hydrated, I can go for months without headaches. If I let the water regimen slip, I go back to my monthly / bi-weekly headache. And it is not a temporary thing; if I have a headache, water will not really get rid of it, but if I am well hydrated, I will not get headaches.
I have to say, I appreciate all the advice from fellow sufferers regarding treatments and doctors and whatnot. I know I’ve offered my own share of advice over the years. But really, that’s not what this thread is about, at least in my mind, since after all, we’re not supposed to be doing medical advice here. This was just a simple “Man, this sucks” sort of thing.
Understand, there’s nothing really new here. This has been going on since the third grade, for crying out loud. It comes and it goes, there are good periods and bad. I was just going through a bad patch, and felt like venting. For what it’s worth, I finally got a decent night’s sleep last night and woke up feeling fine. As I knew I would sooner or later.
The cycle continues. But thank you all for your kind words, your advice, and your concern.
I feel for you. I have chronic back pain as a result of disease and surgery and if I complain at all (I try so hard not to) very well meaning people come out of the woodwork to tell me what worked for them, what to try, etc. I know, I know- I’ve tried nearly all of it- sometimes you just have to VENT and say “MAN THIS SUCKS!!”
