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I gave my opinion last year when I had the worst cycle of my life after the shots. Might have just been a coincidence but it was terrible.

Talking as normal and sitting in a chair??!! Wow, so glad to hear it, that sounds like incredible progress. And as much of an unpleasant ordeal the fuss kicked up over feeding tube must be, it sounds like it could be a good sign in the overall scheme that she's so determined to return to normal functioning ASAP! Did she inherit this rebellious behavior stuff from her dad?

At least she is out of the "critical stage" and shoot I can't blame her on the feeding tube. I like to taste my food! I've been thinking of you and her and am happy there is some positive progress!

Well what can I say . Off the critical ward on to the major trauma ward . Talking as normal . Sitting in a chair beside her bed . Causing a major fuss because they won't take her feeding tube out yet

It is not surprising that anything raising general body inflammation could potentially trigger or exacerbate a cycle. Vaccines work by triggering an immune response to produce antibodies which activate when the harmful antigen (in this case the covid spike protein) intrudes. Personally some of my worst attacks were in conjunction with systemic infection. This of course creates a bigger dilemma; to vax or not to vax? For the purposes of this post I’m not on either side and firmly believe this is a personal decision. If in fact vaccination can trigger an attack or even a cycle that sucks but is not surprising. The subsequent issue is what happens to you if you get covid after getting vaccination vs forgoing vaccination? By now its pretty clear contracting one form of covid vaccinated or not is inevitable but we still don’t have a clear picture of the consequences of “long covid” in the context of vaccination. From a cardiac perspective, vaccination has a very small but real chance of inducing a cardiomyopathy or pericarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle or sac around the heart). Some folks use this info to not get vaccinated. The problem is if you are not vaccinated and contract covid your chances of getting myocarditis or pericarditis is much higher and it is more difficult to resolve. Same for “long covid”, it seems unvaccinated folks have a much higher incidence of “brain fog”, fatigue and systemic illness than their vaccinated counterparts. Extrapolating it seems reasonable to speculate that covid could trigger clusters worse than the vaccine and have a longer effect in the unvaccinated. This makes it imperative to do one’s best to take precautions vaccinated or not to minimize exposure to covid and inflammation in general. There are no easy answers for this and I doubt we will ever have a definative answer; especially one we will all agree on.

Here's one add to the above posts. When you get COVID, they give you, drum roll - vitamin D in large doses! For good reason too. So, it makes sense to be loaded up on D during this time with that virus still floating around. This is demonstrated by Bosco's shorter downtime/milder case of COVID than what her husband had. I follow the initial D3 Regimen: https://vitamindwiki.com/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=7708 It is simple and easy to get the vitamins and take them. A blood test is a good idea before you start, but not absolutely needed. You can order one for your D yourself. If it is below 80ng/ml, you will benefit from the D3. Chers appear to require the D to be in the 80 to 100 range to be pain free in many cases. You can add Melatonin (up to 25mg/night) or Benadryl at night to help with any nocturnal hits too. The upshot is that the regimen will lower the pain level and slow the ramp-up for you. For many, it ends a cycle and prevents another. Not all respond to it strongly enough to be pain free, but it appears that most CHers will benefit from taking the supplements by getting lower level hits and slowed down ramp-up. Those can be quite valuable by themselves.

I don't have anything to say about Nurtec, except to mention that just yesterday a person posted that s/he was recently prescribed Nurtec: https://clusterbusters.org/forums/topic/7465-newbie-to-group-advice/?tab=comments#comment-71856 I looked at goodrx.com, where there are often free coupons for lower prices for things you can get at standard pharmacies, but the lowest price there was $886.62. I did want to mention that a possible antidote to being knocked on one's ass by Imitrex (and to most of the other side effects) is to use less of it each time. Most people only need about 2mg to stop an attack, and the injector holds 6mg. Many people disassemble the autoinjector so they can give themselves smaller doses. https://clusterbusters.org/forums/topic/2446-extending-imitrex/ Some folks can get it in vials with syringes so they can measure out their own doses. Some do fine with a triptan nasal spray, which has fewer side effects. Do you have oxygen? Are you doing the D3 regimen?