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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/26/2019 in all areas

  1. Welcome! O2 needs to be used in a specific way to work. Most doc's do not know this or do not mention it. CHFather has written a wonderful paper on O2 that is in the Clusterbuster Files section of the board. HOW you use it is the most important thing. The short and skinny version is to use a flow of 15lpm to 25lpm at first and hyperventilate - breath in deeply, hold for a few seconds and exhale with force. IE: Do a crunch at the end to remove all the CO2 that you can. When the pain subsides your breathing can be slowed down. Then, when you are pain free, stay on the O2 at a comfortable flow rate for about 5 minutes. If you don't that hit is going to come back quickly. And you will swear that O2 does not work or it is causing more hits! Please give your little daughter a hug for being a hero!!! ATB!
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  2. HI plhbn and welcome you have come to the right place. Ive had a decent amount of experience with oral forms of sumatriptan all forms actually apart from the injections as they are $160 i my country. Before I was first diagnosed with Clusters, I and the doctors thought I was having migraines and I was prescribed Sumatriptan tablets. In the early days of my headaches they were much less frequent. The tablets definitely worked better than otc and opioid painkillers I had tried and actually would kill the headache. The problem being they did take a long time to kick in, minimum 30 mins to an hour. That feels like a long when you are in agony. After being diagnosed with clusters I was prescribed the nasal spray version. I found that to be very hit and miss. My nose gets totally blocked sometimes so I felt it didnt even get into my system. At times it worked and It would start to kill the headache in about 20 to 40 minutes. I then tryed the wafer version, you put that in you mouth and it dissolves, I found that to work pretty well usually working in 20 to 40 minutes. The key I found with all oral Triptans is that If you take them as soon as you feel you might have a headache coming on the more success you have at aborting the Headache quickly. Also Drinking strong coffee or a energy drink seems to make it more effective also. This method was effective for me for a fair while. The problem I found was The worse my condition got the more I needed to take them. Not only did they start losing effectiveness but I started to feel very average, tight felling in the chest, high blood pressure, even more tired than usual, a walking zombie pretty much. At times a Headache would hit so fast and was so strong that I would take one and it wouldn't work so after an hour of agony I would take another one out of desperation then that still didnt work for another 40 minutes. Then I felt so crap for the rest of the day dizzy tired, and a few hours later it would happen again. Maybe because of a rebound effect or maybe not im not sure. Once I moved to Oxygen I felt much better. In closing oral Triptans were a saviour for me for a fair while when used at first signs of headache with caffeine and taken sparingly but were not the long term solution. Tread carefully and goodluck, There is a lot of information on this forum to help you improve you pain. Plenty of people to provide answers to your questions. Dan
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