Headache Diary Day 52: Sleeping In = Throbbing Skull

I finally got to sleep in this morning after running around every day last weekend and then teaching all week. In doing so, I slept 3 hours past my 6am dose of Indomethacin and awoke to a throbbing head on the right side. This only re-affirms to me that this is a permanent condition (Hemicrania Continua). Since the headache was full-blown...it took a couple of hours for it to go away entirely. That stated, the Indomethacin did its job once more and masked the headache until about 30 minutes from my next dose eight hours later. Will be up until about 1am tonight as my sleeping in got my schedule off routine for my medicine. Guess this is one way that this headache continues to run my life as of late. My schedule of waking and sleeping coincides with the 8 hour doses of the only medicine that has brought me any relief.

Headache Diary Day 48

I did not post yesterday as my headache is almost unnoticeable with the exception of about every 7 1/2 hours. I did run late in taking my initial dose of indomethacin this morning which made my drive in to school a bit rough (headlights). I also had a few brief moments of discomfort throughout the day. I suppose those would have been extremely intense had I not been masking the headache with medication. I am still grateful that my neurologist indulged me in trying treatment for this condition prior to attempting even more expensive migraine busters...which we now know would not have worked at all anyhow.

Headache Diary Day 46: Nearly Pain-free

Better timing helped me to awake headache-free today. This afternoon, while attending a birthday party with my daughter, the nose tingling and lip numbness arrived at about 6 1/2 hours into my morning dose of Indomethacin. By the time I got us home from the party and ate a bite so as to not take the medicine on an empty stomach, it had passed the 8 hour mark and my unilateral headache without side shift had returned in full force. The medicine did not initially knock it this time, but I was able to get fully rid of it by napping for about an hour or so. Talking about my headache every day, or lack thereof, seems odd to me though I realize the importance of it. "Tossing Words" was not ever intended to be the public personal diary of a headache sufferer, but as this Blogger's life has taken the shift from being someone who is rarely sick to someone with a condition...so changes the Blog. I do not pretend to have many readers anyhow, maybe I am wrong about that, but I want to write about this as a testament to myself as to monitor my own condition and hopefully to help others. Had I allowed it and not self-advocated, who knows how many expensive and unnecessary paths my neurologist might have taken me down? He and my personal doctor were so sure this was a normal migraine and kept throwing things at it that work for normal migraine sufferers and everything failed. I am appreciative that he indulged my request to try Indomethacin before trying an uber expensive treatment like Amerge that would have, as it appears, left me still counting the days of an unrelenting right-side headache with an even emptier wallet than usual instead of monitoring a medication that actually helps me. I am generally not one to bandwagon along with people who self-diagnose conditions. I have always seen the value in the knowledge obtained through years of medical school, but this time the internet research of a layman (me) paid off.