Bejeeber

You've come a LONG way Moxie. What a difference busting can make. Best o' luck with the last bust o' the batch!

Man I hope he's not just some perv who enjoys giving people shots in the groin and posts phony testimonials on his site.

For you to have made it through an unfathomable tragedy like that including major physical trauma, followed by worsened CH, well I just can't imagine how you were able to deal with that. But here you are actually having taken charge of your own treatment and busted the CH, which is a major major accomplishment. So I'd say you're an incredibly strong individual with a proven track record now of being able to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and you're on a genuine upward swing. Certainly socializing can be therapeutic, so if you do find it possible to rejoin the workforce at one point, I imagine there could be benefits to an environment where you have good people to hang out with and interact with. I'm hoping the busting will end up also helping with the PTSD! 8-)

If CH is your main malady and your physical and mental health was rough when working before mainly due to the trials and tribs of working + CH, then my first thought would be to seek out some work you enjoy when you're fairly confident you've busted this CH thing pretty effectively. Granted, sometimes seeking enjoyable work can be easier said then finding enjoyable work can be done. :-? And if the anxiety is an employment blocker, then prioritizing finding an effective treatment for it seems like the thing to do. Sorry, I don't know of a particularly good treatment to suggest though. I do have a brother in-law who suffered from debilitating anxiety. He found Paxil made him worse, but another one of those SSRI's helped him a lot. Apparently finding the right SSRI can be hit and miss and vary with individuals (if one wants to consider SSRI's - I don't have a strong opinion on whether that's a worthwhile approach or not).

Gee Willikers is that the official conference slogan now??!!

I like to slice mine diagonally, just as I used to with grilled cheese sandwiches. ;D

Absolutely. There have been many reports here of busting as a successful treatment for migraines, including CH'ers who also experienced migraine who found that the migraines were the first thing to disappear upon busting. 8-)

Ooh! Now that's an encouraging news report. [smiley=thumbup.gif]

What they said - and of course the O2 CHf mentions tends to be of critical importance. Specifically high liter flow 100% O2, which we've seen chronic CH'ers here (including former chronics, thanks to busting) report as having been essential for aborting attacks during their detox period.

Last time I checked, our much loved forum member 'Tingeling'Â was finding that CrossFit training was helping her (after she'd already been helped significantly by busting).

Lordy that Nanny does have a SNEAKY side when it comes to her love for the automobile. Good thing you like kids, or at least kids of the nephew variety.Â

Whoa 24 days, very glad to hear it - Kage is da man!! Heckuva story about Nanny Violet there, and whatta family y'all are for taking care of her like that. If religion has played a major role in making her such an incredible gal, well then religion just got a couple bonus points in my mind where there were none before.

Dam! Well that is patently lousy, but please keep in mind that although some CH'ers can actually abort an attack with an energy drink even when in high cycle, this is not the case for many of us (personally I can mainly knock down shadows and minor hits with them). There are plenty of other fish to throw at this beast though, right? Busting, O2, D3 regimen, etc.....

I would like to take this opportunity to insert my swear word of choice, because it both sux and bloze that the slapback phenomenon has found you. > Seems some of us experience slapbacks, some don't, and this is definitely an occasion for those of us who haven't had the slapback pleasure to thank a lucky start or 3!Â

What Brew said. Plus in the meantime there are plenty of CH'ers and supporters on the message board here who have explored other avenues and busted cycles who'd love to chat you up.

Hey CT - well it is good to have a back up plan, isn't it? I'd recommend getting some busting materials for prevention together yesterday, and high flow 100% O2 including an E tank with demand valve (kept in the car if necessary) for work hours aborts - it would be best to start procuring the O2 day before yesterday. 8-) Oxygen links: http://www.clusterheadaches.com/cb/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1299901790 http://www.clusterheadaches.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1226213955

You ROCK Renee!! [smiley=thumbup.gif] [smiley=thumbup.gif] Super proud o' ya! I know peppermint is one of the teas known for it's anti nausea properties - might have to try that meself next time. 8-)

No, please Lordy above let the fecked up things stop. But it would be GOOD to write new books every couple years. Sequels. Continuing adventures of.... C'mon Holden Caulfield didn't wait for his misadventures to all play out before sharing some of them.Â

Leave it to Mystina to somehow find the humor in the harrowing - and that IS FUNNY. ;D I dunno, Mystina, your accounts are seriously riveting - I have to wonder if you might find a mass audience if, based on your experiences, you were to write an entire BOOK in the same conversational style as your above post....

What those guys said! You got enough to worry about right now without introducing worry about the possibility of going chronic (I know it's the ultimate worst case scenario for us episodics to contemplate)! And from my experience and well over 1,000 reports I've read from other CH'ers, I can tell you that although it's common for CH intensity to ramp up over the years, it's just about as common for the remissions to mercifully extend longer and longer. You might have to just go a couple decades with CH though to see whether the luxuriously long remissions will kick in. Also it may be good to keep in mind that (according to my unofficial observation) there is a much higher percentage of CH'ers who have become chronic at one point participating on this message board (many of them former chronics due to busting success ) than there are in the general CH population and on the other CH forum. I figure that's because busting is about the only reasonable thing offering relief to chronics right now. And let's not forget CHfather's message of hope about the very real likelihood of more and more improved treatments for CH coming down the pike, especially the possibly silver bullet-ish BOL-148!

Hey Dave, OK here's my experience FWIW: After some success with RC in years past, I stopped getting results from it, so I switched to Vit M which promptly did work wonders for me. I decided to give the RC one more shot with a fresh batch from iamshaman.com recently though when I was getting minor daily hits (a sign for me that a cycle likely is likely to want to start up full bore). I tried to follow the latest preparation guidelines suggested by the sharp people on here like CHfather - I floated out the bad ones, then crushed the 66 remaining good ones inside a baggie (I used a rubber mallet). Then for something a little different I soaked them in room temp ginger tea (Yogi brand) for 2 hours before ingesting all 66. I was hoping the ginger would help me avoid my one minute of nausea I tend to get from RC. Still got the brief nausea, but darned if the RC didn't just snuff out all my CH symptoms with no minor hits, no nuthin' in the following days. 8-) SOOooOoo, I don't know if the ginger tea helped, or did I finally get my hands on a potent batch of RC again, or what? Ricardo has offered that a peppermint tea soak will convert the LSA into LSH, which is also effective, with possibly more of a trip inducing potential. Word has it that ginger might do the same.... Unfortunately, I don't know if the RC would've been able to break me out of a high cycle like you're experiencing, since those are tougher to knock down. :-/

I think you'll find energy drinks to be more effective than just caffeine drinks, because it's the combo of caffeine and taurine in the energy drinks that is considered to be the real ticket. At work energy shots can be good, since you can have them right in your pocket ready to down in one second at the first sign of an impending attack. And combining them with O2 or even push ups etc. can just make the abort all the more guaranteed and long lasting. 8-)

For me, pre-busting it was a matter of becoming ultra aggressive and focusing all of my off work hours into in the pursuit of knowledge regarding what other CH'ers were finding to be the most effective treatments, then going all out to implement what I'd learned. [Full disclosure - I wanted to keep my job, but my primary motivation was terror in anticipation of more attacks] The last time I took this approach when holding a job with regular hours at the office, I only experienced one non aborted attack at work during a 2.5 month cycle. Also working in my favor was some luck and money! Guissepi, a regular contributor on the other board, held down his job as a patrol cop (!) for around 30 years by always having an E tank with a DEMAND VALVE in his patrol car, which allowed him to pull right over and abort attacks within 5 minutes. So I think an E tank in the car with a DEMAND VALVE is something for any CH'er in cycle trying to hold an office or other on site job to seriously consider. Not only is the demand valve the most effective delivery system, it conserves supply because the O2 only flows on inhale - a really big deal that can save our arses when away from home. The past couple years CH hasn't interfered at all for me. A cycle tries to start up, and I simply knock it back down with mushrooms or most recently, RC seeds. Results like these aren't so attainable for some, I realize, hence my gratitude that my luck has held so far, even if the money has run out once or twice.

WTF, that is HORRIBLE. :'( Lots of admiration here for you for vowing to stay strong and stay away from the triptans under these extreme circumstances. Unless you've tried RC already and not gotten results, I wonder if you should consider ordering some tomorrow, overnighted, so you could have it Wednesday and take it before bed (no tripping, just good sleep should result). But dammit that could mess with your Vit M weekend busting plan, so I don't know if that's a worthy idea or not.....? Any chance of snagging some high flow welding O2 tomorrow so you can have an alternative to triptans for aborting attacks?

Whoa - now THAT'S a Vegas story , so you'll be returning in Sept. 2012 for your 46th Vegas anniversary! Oh those pesky pesky decades can end up flinging by ever so rapidly, can they not? Let the whippersnappers like Dan here be forewarned. Here's a random photo found online of Vegas June '66 for your reminiscing pleasure  ;D