Oww

Thanks for the response. Yes, I'm thankful for strangers wanting to help. I just can't respond to them well in the moment. Most of the emergency medical care in my area is volunteer. So, if they get called out to help me, they've dropped everything - including their job - to come help me, for nothing. I don't want to make so much unnecessary work for them. And admittedly, the interaction with them is difficult to deal with. I'm not to good at searching the forums - I wasn't able to find those other posts you'd referenced.

Does anyone here have a solution for helping strangers understand, and that I'll be OK in an hour? I'm not able to respond in any meaningful way during the peak of an attack, but I can still pace until too tired. I've noticed holding my head in my hand (I often do this in reaction to the pain) helps some, but kind people still want to help or call 911. I've thought about a note that I could just hand them, but unfortunately I have heart disease and don't want to tell everyone to just ignore me completely and me end up with another heart attack -- obvious but my blood pressure and heart rate goes way up and stays up for a while after a cluster. (Some nurses observed me with a CH (Cluster Headache) and were concerned that I was having another heart attack and called for an ambulance.) I could probably describe the difference well enough for someone to determine if it was heart or cluster, but a coworker wasn't sure if everyone would read a note anyway. Aside from getting an ambulance for me, many want to offer me a private dark room to sit or lay down in. Kind, but being confined with a cluster is miserable. (I've been in a hospital for other health and got a CH. It came quick enough that I couldn't tell the nurse what was happening, but got a nice dose of Dilaudid through my IV.)