A New Cluster

On monday, before work, I had a another cluster headache attack. It’s been two and a half years since my last cluster, which is scaring me shitless, since the cluster before that was in 2001, seven years prior to the last one. The idea that they’re coming faster and faster is not something that I’m prepared to ponder right now, and I’m just going to conclude that three points on a timeline can’t be considered a trend and leave it at that.

I felt strange as I woke up that day. I was restless and low on energy and I felt like I was perhaps getting a cold or something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but when the attack hit I was slightly better prepared for it. It was a 30 minute, Kip 7 attack, which left me exhausted for the rest of the day. Yesterday, I started to feel weird in the afternoon and I suspected I’d have another attack, so I went home early. Within an hour of getting home, my eye started tearing up and my nose started running and I had a Kip 8 attack that lasted probably about an hour, perhaps a little more.

In the past, one of the things that was always so hard to deal with was their unpredictability. My clusters don’t follow “normal” patterns, neither do the attacks in the cluster. Mine are usually shorter, around the 30-45 minute range, and I don’t get any that are below a Kip 7. My clusters are short and episodic, perhaps a couple of weeks, and I get 3 or 4 attacks a week, hardly ever on the same times. But now, I’m starting to predict them better, which is a huge relief to me. Let’s see how the rest of the week goes.

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