Occipital neuralgia

[kat_92]

hey Everyone! 

I hope you are all staying healthy with the recent spike we are seeing with corona virus cases. It feels like we might have a leg up with all the vitamins we take (or maybe I’m being naive and they won’t help combat covid), but it helps to think they do! Anywho; I am writing because I have been doing some research and I came across occipital neuralgia. I have seen information on this before but I always brushed it off. July makes one year with a headache every day! Yikes. Never a full blown attack. No eye redness, stuffed nostril, just constant pain. Some days the pain would subside completely and come back the next day. The pain is steadily behind my left eye, my scalp, back of my neck and back of my head. I did a week long indomethacin trial. There were 2 days of the week I was pain free. The sidebar effects were not worth continuing in my opinion. My neurologist said results should be immediate, but other sources I’ve read said results could take 2 weeks. Debating whether or not I should give it another shot? I am currently on 160 gym verapamil (a very low dose I am to understand). The reason I’m writing is because when I was in middle school I started getting these pains in the back of my head. Only lasted about 20 seconds. If I moved my head a certain way, out of no where, I would get this instant almost hot flash across the back of my head. I would lose my vision for a few seconds, and it was gone just like that. My doctors always brushed it off as a pinched nerve. Now with my headache experiences, I’m wondering if I should look at occipital neuralgia closer? Or, if as @spiny suggested I have chronic CH that just haven’t emerged as the hell that they are yet. All MRIs have come back normal by the way. I don’t know. I’m just grasping at straws these days. It’s getting tiresome. And it’s only been a year!  

Pain free days ahead 

Kat 

[devonrex]

Is it possible it could be SUNCT or SUNA? They are described as sharp stabbing pain, in much the same place as a cluster, but short lasting 10 seconds to like 4 minutes, SUNCT has both redness and tears in the affected eye and SUNA has one or the other and not both. I only remember these because I got an email from here about people with clusters and SUNCT or SUNA, it was a poll. To me, what you describe sounds very similar.

But of course, it does sound similar to occipital neuralgia as well. This condition sometimes feels like one of those logic questions, all thumbs are fingers but not all fingers are thumbs...