clusterhead

A net-friend, a fellow sufferer of cluster headaches, asked me to write a description of the kind of headaches I used to suffer through during the 4 year period of my life that I danced regularly with chronic cluster headaches.

First, headache is the wrong word. I have suffered from greenstick fractures, broken bones, arthritic joints and some incredibly severe self-inflicted pain (I had a weird childhood) and nothing even approached the pain of cluster headaches.

I have had migraines, I lost a testicle due to lack of circulation after a botched hernia repair (it hurt like getting kicked in the nuts, except the pain lasted about 3 weeks) and they werent even close to the pain of a cluster headache.

I recently had a heart attack, and some very scary chest pain. It was far more frightening than any but my first few clusters, because I was convinced I was dying, but the pain didn't approach clusterhead pain.

All right, get ready to use your imagination, hardcore. A cluster headache has the same quality of pain as the first quarter-second of the most severe stubbed toe you have ever felt, and it is located behind your left eye, pushing outward. The pain does not diminish to a throbbing chronic pain, it stays sharp, as tho somebody were trying to push a burning bowling ball out through your eye socket, and they KEEP PUSHING. It is acute pain. it is severe acute pain, and It STAYS severe acute pain.

And it lasts about 2 hours.

And then, it turns off like somebody throwing a switch. Remember that, it becomes very important.

Because in about fifteen minutes or so, somebody will flip the goddamn switch again. Or not.

They hit in clusters, hence the name, so there are fifteen or twenty of these lovely 2-hour (approx) headaches yet to come, before the cluster ends. IF the cluster ends. Can't go out, can't make plans, can't do anything. I was extremely lucky (from a familial perspective) because almost all (maybe 85 %) of my headaches happened late at night, so my wife and son did not have to witness it, altho my screams would occasionally wake them.

During the daytime, I pretended to be healthy and whole (because I was. Cluster headaches do no damage, they just hurt) but for two years, I vacillated between incredible pain, and the fear of the imminent return of incredible pain, and those are the only two states in which I existed.

They were so bad that at one point, in the middle of a cluster, I think I had a psychotic break, and convinced myself that I wasn't "really" in pain. I was certain that I could cure it by convincing myself it was fake. No, it does not sound rational, but I wasn't, really. Which is what disturbs me the most about them, I was in too much pain and too much fear to think clearly.

I haven't had one since 2005.

I doubt I will survive if they return.