My grandmother gets thunderclap headaches from time to time, but I don’t believe she’s seen a doctor for them. I can’t find much information online from any credible sources (WebMD and some Headache Organization site and a few others) other than “see a doctor/call 911”. She asked me to dig up some information on them, but when that’s all I can find, I don’t know if she’ll go along with what they say. Do any of you medical folk know what causes them, or why she should go to the doctor ASAP for them? I’m very worried about her but I feel I need to get some reason for her to call the doctor about them. (She was a nurse for most of her life, so I guess she’s tired of going, or something.)
I’m sorry for asking for ‘information’ like this, and some of you may write it off as a homework assignment (heh, I’m out of school), but that’s okay. I’m just both curious about them for knowledge purposes, and for my grandmother’s education to whatever her condition is. Thanks ahead to anybody who can help.
Sorry, I don’t know what “thunderclap” headaches are. If she gets them regularly and survives them, then it is not the type of headache associated with sub-arachnoid hemorrhage, where the person feels like they’ve just been hit with a baseball bat, frequently resulting in falling over, and also described as “the worse headache ever”. This is the medical emergency the webMD site refers to.
Might she have migraines?
Having reviewed the literature on them a bit, I would suggest she consult a doc. She could have a slowly leaking aneurysm or an intracranial thrombosis. Many people with these headaches have no findings of hemorrhage or aneurysm or thrombosis, but enough do to merit investigation.
This site isn’t bad: http://imigraine.net/other/thunder.html
So wait, how can one tell if they had a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage? About 5 years ago, for a couple weeks or so, I kept getting these headaches (like getting hit with a bat, and definitely the worst headache ever) whenever I would do any sort of physical exertion. Try to do a few pushups, even, and I’d be fetal for a good half hour. They stopped after a few weeks though, without ever having found their source (MRIs came up with nothing, except for finding what I was told were “unrelated” venal angiomas in that part of my head).
peepthis, I assume you mean venous angiomas, as a venal one would be an angioma which is open to bribery.
If I had a patient with those symptoms and a normal MRI, I’d consult a neurologist. Or possibly even a neurosurgeon. An angiogram is still the gold standard to determine whether problems exist.
Thanks so much Qadgop. I have no idea what happens when she gets them, but with all these fancy-named scary reasons for getting them (assuming she really is having them and not just migraines), that should convince her to go get checked out at least, and soon.