Not Sure if I Have Are Cluster Headaches. Any Help?

So about 2-3 weeks ago I started to get these headaches in the morning when I drove my girlfriend to work. It seemed like every day I would get this pain above my right eye that went toward my right temple and sometimes down the right side of my neck. They were terrible and it was like I could barely focus on what I was doing. They seemed to go away after an hour or so and I didn't get them until the next day or maybe two days later.

On August 9 of this year I was at work and got one of the headaches except it was so bad this time that I couldn't keep working and I had to sit down (I work at Wendy's so I'm usually on my feet). The pain was excruciating. Same places, above/behind my right eye and my right temple. Not throbbing, not pulsing, just a constant sever pain. I ended up sitting in the break room for about 2 hours and then all of a sudden the pain was gone. There was no step down like where a normal headache might get better and then go away. It was like severe one second and then basically gone the next. I felt really tired and out of it for the rest of the day. Kinda like I felt hungover but I worked the rest of the day with no real problems other than my head feeling sore, like someone punched me.

The next couple days are pretty normal but I go to my GP and he orders a CT. I get it on August 11 and it's negative. He gives me Notriptyline and send me on my way.

It's 5am August 13 and I wake up with the horrible pain in the same place. This is probably the worst one that I've had. It's so bad that I'm shaking all over and crying, a 23 year old guy who never cries is now crying from the pain. My GF calls 911 cause she has no idea what's going on cause even when the pain was bad at work I just kinda sat there trying to make it go away not totally out of it. I get to the hospital and they give me an injection of Benadryl to calm me down and then two things to supposedly take the pain away. Not sure if they did because the Benadryl put me way out. I get discharged and my GF takes me back to my house and I feel the same was I did at work, hungover and exhausted.

I see my GP the following week and he now wants an MRI and gives me Fioricet to take when I get a headache. Between the 14th and the 18th of August I get very few if any headaches. Maybe a small one here and there but nothing that even stops me from doing what I'm doing. On the 18th I ended up having an appointment with a cardiologist for a follow up for Mitral Valve Prolapse. He's the first one that mentions to me they might be cluster headaches but since I had Lyme Disease 4 years ago he wants to see if I might have it again.

Now this week had been pretty good until yesterday when I got a pretty bad one but again one that I just went in my room turned off the lights and contemplated my own existence for a few hours and then back to feeling hungover. As I'm typing this in the morning I don't really have any headache on the right side but I always seem to get a small one on the left side after a big attack.

I'm going to see a neurologist on the 30th. I'm going to tell him that I think they are cluster headaches and see what he thinks. My cardiologist wants a lumbar puncture to test if the Lyme got into the CNS by testing the spinal fluid.

I'm not sure if these are cluster headaches because everything I've read seems to show that true cluster headaches come at about the same time every day and sometimes more than once a day. While the pain that I'm experiencing might fit the bill there doesn't seem to be any predictability to my headaches. Sometimes it's in the morning and sometimes randomly during the day but never at the same time since the very beginning when I got them only in the morning. Any help would be greatly appreciated because I haven't been able to work because I never know when I'm going to get a bad headache and they don't want me to be sitting down for 3 hours.

Posted Aug 25, 2017, 12:32 PM UTC

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