Another Solution for Cronic Headache

Ever since last October (see this post) I have been trying various 'natural' methods to curb the intensity of my daily headaches. I cut back on coffee and sugar. I would regularly take short breaks to meditate and attempt to flush the pain out of my head. All of these had limited success on a daily basis, and did nothing to prevent the major headache attacks that would last for a few days.  Two weeks ago one of these attacks came on that did not dissipate in the usual three days. My head hurt so bad I had to take a few days off of work. I started to cry two times trying to go to sleep in fear that I was not going to wake up because the pain was so intense.   

 

Not Funny,  not me, but I can relate

But just as I stumbled upon Tramadol, I made another discovery last week that virtually eliminates my headaches. I had woken up at 12:30am one day last week with my head screaming in pain. Could not lay there in bed, standing up and moving around makes it feel a little better. After trolling around the house finding quite things to do,  it was 3am, and I needed to 'wake up' for work at 6 - something had to be done. I had a prescription for Ativan (wiki) to help me sleep, with strict instructions from the doctor to only take at night. I decided to take it, rationalizing that if I oversleep and am late for work, so be it. At this crossing I was gonna miss work anyway. I took one dose, and went to sleep as expected. The miracle was that my biological clock woke me up at 6 as usual, and the headache was practically gone! That day I put two and two together and hypothesized that the reason I can sleep with the Ativan was that it makes my headache go away. I felt pretty good all that day. Now "practically gone" to me means I am to the point where it feels like a couple of aspirins would take care of it. My daily headaches are 100x worse than this, so I am happy. Next I set out to prove my hypothesis that Ativan quells my headaches. The next day, I did not take a Ativan at night, but in the morning. Good news was that I felt much better that day. Bad news was that was my last dose from a prescription with 0 refils. Time to call the doctor and see if I can talk him into prescribing Ativan  for daily use for headaches. Call went well, I got a new Rx (1mg 3x/day), and because of Ativan's anti-seizure properties, he said that we can look into tapering off the Keppra I take for seizures.

Lets hope that I do not build a tolerance to this as the wiki talks about.  If so, I will try to go back to Tramadol, which had the same effects for me but eventually developed a tolerance.
 

Blizzard in progress, Ativan

Wow - We are having a major blizzard here in Chicago. It started snowing at 1 pm, and at 8pm a neighbor was stuck in their car in a drift in front of our house. A Neighbor got stuck in their driveway. It is supposed to snow all night.

Holly got my radiation treatment scheduled early today, so we were in and out before the snow started. I also got the weekly blood work done today too. The radiation department said that they will be closed tomorrow, so we will just have one more day tacked on to the end of the six week cycle.

This last week had had to find the right dose of laxative, the chemo causes issues in this area. Too much of a good thing can be real bad. I think I found a good balance at about 1/4 of what the doctor recommended.

I also discovered how well one of the drugs I have been taking, Ativan, works. I was supposed to take Ativan for about 30 days until a SSRI drug took effect to help me sleep. I started ramping down on Ativan, and lost all ability to sleep. I felt just miserable all day. I suspected it was the Ativan, so I took one two hours before bed. My headache and miserable feeling disappeared in an hour, and I was able to sleep all night.

Given that, I asked the doctor to stop the SSRI and just let me take the Ativan. They said this was not a good idea, and I should just keep taking the SSRI. This is very frustrating. The original complaint was inability to sleep, the doctor says to take SSRI, but Ativan for first 30 days until SSRI takes effect. I find that the Ativan not only helps me sleep, but makes me feel a lot better when I am awake. The doctor says that is not a good idea. They want me to stop taking the drug that works and keep taking the one that as far as I can tell does nothing. The doctor gave me another 30 days of Ativan to give us time to straiten this out.