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Yes, my GP wants confirmation from a neuro. Perhaps the Neuro will be a better fit to treat me. He also thinks I may have sleep apnea and this Neuro doctor specializes in that too. I had an MRI, all was normal there. Thanks to everyone here for your help in directing me to different information to read. I surely do appreciate you!

Thanks for all of the replies. It's certainly been a different beast this time around. I don't usually get day time hits (thankfully) but I will deal with occasional shadows that I'd classify as a 1-2 on a pain scale. Ginger tea helps with those and Tylenol will block it if all else fails. I've stayed on O2 anywhere from 5 - 25 minutes after the pain subsides. Last year I would only get one, maybe two wakeups a night but this year is closer to 5-7 each night. My dentist has suspicions I have sleep apnea, I will look into this. Thanks! I've noticed this as well, my bag doesn't fill as fast even when set at highest flow. It still works for me but tends to take closer to 7-8 minutes to work. This seems right. This time around I'm using 15LPM until the pain subsides then I go down to 10LPM and breathe a little slower for 8-10 minutes. If anything it helps me fall back to sleep quicker.

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We all find our own little 'method'' that works best for us, at that point in time.

You tell it, sister! (For the record for anyone new, I'm male, but my ma taught me to respect the gals and to recognize the kinda BS they all too often have had to deal with)

....i'd bang some Benadryl...even with the FM. sounds like a "histamine bomb" from an allergic reaction.....more likely leading to a CH vs the other way round. it is almost spring, pollen could be around, check for house mold, new carpet?, new whatever?.... and brush any pets outside before they come in....allergens on fur maybe....

It seems that the men hang onto the 'Leonine facial featured male' of about a hundred years ago!! And MOST Neuros are???? MEN! It will wind up being 50 - 50, as will Migraines I think. Men having alcohol as their main trigger just shows that more men were drinking with their CH than women. Given the same alcohol, it is most likely that both respond the same way. As for the length of cycle or being chronic, it may be true. But who knows at this point? I do know that until I forced my husband to watch Hollywood and see Dan slam the lamp. Then the other (who was that?) guy peeling his face off on the carpet, he thought that I was over-reacting to pain and that a man could and would cope better than I was. That bit of film flipped a dang switch in his head that needed to be thrown! I will be forever grateful to those guys. I will say that I think they need to get off the hormone train! Men can't have Migraines because they have different hormones from women and women get Migraines. Women can't have Clusters because they have hormones, but the wrong ones. I have CH and my son has Migraines and Ice Picks. Hmmm.

Were you able to find one Wake? You are in a tough place, so no surprise that it was hiding like that. Have the slap backs eased off now? Are you getting some P. F. time now? I really hope so.

About two threads up, on this page, you will find the current list.

I suppose your doc wanted his/her diagnosis confirmed by a neuro before prescribing any of the other standard CH treatments, such as oxygen. The timing of attacks that you have described surely sounds like CH. I assume you'll have an MRI to rule out anything else (CH can only be diagnosed from the symptoms, not from an MRI or any other medical test). Being new to the condition, you might get some benefit from this "overview" document: https://clusterbusters.org/forums/topic/6213-basic-non-busting-information/. As is mentioned in there, lot of people find that caffeine will stop an attack or reduce its severity -- and even though your attacks are nocturnal, most people find they can get right back to sleep even after that caffeine intake. Given the relative mildness of your attacks and your newness to CH, I wouldn't be surprised if a strong cup of coffee would be enough to do the job. Some people do energy drinks of one sort or another (discussed in the document). As others have said, you'll find a wonderfully supportive community here, so please keep us informed and don't hesitate to ask any questions you might have.

It sounds to me like your your cycle could be ending - unless you started on the verap recently enough that it might have only started kicking in 10 nights ago, in which case it is hard to tell, hard to know at this point. Sorry you've been hit with this, but glad at least you got diagnosed right away - that's rare! Typical. I do wish headache specialists would practice triage (maybe that isn't taught in headache specialist school? ), but from what I've seen, most or all do not. @Cindi you may have already noticed that if you hang about here some and read through stuff such as is found at the blue New Users - Read Here First banner above, there's a good chance you could prevent altogether any next cycle that might want to come a knockin'.

It seems that a hit an hour or two later is considered a 'rebound' by many when it is actually another hit in my mind. For me, a rebound occurs right away if I don't do some post breathing. We need to also consider that CH changes and our number of daily hits can change over time too. My hits come 15 minutes apart all night if not treated. So, an hour or two P.F. is pretty heavenly. And that is only gained if I sleep in the recliner, not the bed. Prone is BAD! An M60 tank will last about 28 hours at 1LPM which equals 1680 usable liters in the tank. I think that we may have been told a bit under the full 28 hour mark when the COPD set-up came into the house for my father-in-law. So, you need to plug in what your flow rate was and for how long. At 15LPM the whole time, you will get almost 2 hours from that M tank I think. So, the easy way is to write down how long you ran at X flow and how long at Y flow, then subtract that out. I ran 5 minutes at 15LPM and 5 at 2LPM., so I used 75 + 10 = 85 liters used. That leaves 1515 liters left. The less O2 that remains in the tank, the lower the actual pressure coming out goes. I can crank it to 20LPM and be getting only 5LPM as the volume drops. Less internal pressure = less pressure to the regulator and less coming out of it. It does not work out perfectly as the tanks come in pressurized at 2200PSI-2500PSI, but it gives you an idea of how to calculate it out. I think my personal worst was a M tank lasted 24 hours.

From my experience i noted that after about 4 times O2 in say 2 hours, 25L/m for 5-10m, it becomes ineffective and have to use a sumatriptan to abort. Staying longer on the O2 after the attack was aborted, did not make a difference for me, as the daily cycle continued. I do not see that as a rebound, more your personal cycle of the beast showing its ugly face

Pressure in the tank is less so it won't flow as much no matter what the regulator setting.

That would be a "normal night" for me when in cycle. Sleep is a big trigger for me so I don't look at as "rebounds"....more like it's just the next one coming. Try staying on the O2 a little longer after the abort. Some report good results doing that. Worth a try.

...only a few cycles with the 1 hr wake ups for me..(O2 always worked better than day time hits!). never could figure what was different to cause this oddity ("normally" 3 daily hits) except sleep being a frequent trigger for most clusterheads (no blissful in cycle naps for 30 yrs for me)....and triggers can be transient. ...have you tried staying on O2 post abort for as long as it took to abort.. ...since CH is likely a wonky hypothalamus...which also controls sleep...a connection to CH is not surprising, and more than a few have found improvement of CH with sleep apnea treatment. worth a doc consult....it never occurred to me at the time...

....as the tank got below half full i used to stare at the flow gauge as a form of distraction.... so i could turn up the decreasing flow as the tank approached empty. there indeed was a point where the knob was at 10 (11 if you are a Spinal Tap fan) and flow just steadily decreased anyway...bears monitoring. sometimes when aborting a night time wake up, with no lights, the sound of the hiss was all that was needed. THAT'S too much experience....sigh

Anyone else catch this last nite? Seems that the nat geo film crew made a visit to the clusterbusters conference this past year and included that video footage in this documentary titled "LSD.. the psychedelic revolution"...season 1 episode 3......many familiar faces including our fearless leader Bob W!! DD

Hello Fellow Clusterheads, I'm currently in the middle of my worst attack to date. I dosed 2 days ago, and the slapbacks I've received are killing me. My wife and I will be moving to Denver in a couple months which means I'll need to change doctors. I found a list of approved doctors that specialize is cluster headaches on here a couple years ago, and I can't track it down. Can anyone link me to it, please? Pain free wishes <3