Weird new pains

Well, sadly, the beneficial effects of the CoQ10 seem to be ebbing -- as everything else that ever helped seems to have done eventually. I got two-three good months out of it, so I guess that's something. Also, I'm not sure if it helped with my chronic low-grade depression or if that came about because of the relief from pain...

Anyway, today has been, well, not terrible, but just kind of trying.
I had a fun assignment out at a wildlife refuge for most of the morning, but the whole time had the nagging throb of a threatening headache that skimmed a bit of the fun off the surface.

By the time I got back to the office, the signs were unmistakable and it was time to take maxalt. I got it out of my purse and held the packet in my hand, sat there looking at it and thinking about how much I hated the way it made me feel and set it down on my desk. I thought, "well, maybe nothing much will come of it, and if it does, I'll just call in sick tomorrow if I have to. I still have one sick day left to get me through to April 1, when the clock starts again on sick time (yeah, I know, that's a strange timetable for sick time -- too complicated to explain).

But it kept intensifying and thinking about how much worse a full blown migraine feels than the unpleasant side effects of triptan drugs finally persuaded me to just take the damn thing. I did, but when it hadn't had much effect in an hour, I started to think maybe I'd waited too long and braced myself for the onslaught.

It never quite came. I went home and laid on my bed for a while and felt things shifting about inside my skull. Couldn't tell quite what direction things were headed. Now, a couple hours later, I'm feeling the sensations of the maxalt starting to work -- but there's something slightly worrisome: I'm feeling this weird pain at the back of my head, starting near the top and kind of branching down the sides. Not sure what that is and it's something new.

Anyway, it's disappointing about the coQ10 -- I really hoped that might be of some lasting benefit, but I'm back in one of those phases where I've been fighting a headache for about the past 10 days and I start getting worn out with it and worrying about how much worse things might get. I hate myself for all my worrying. It doesn't help anything, and in fact probably makes it worse.

As I said, I'm looking into another option, but I haven't had a chance to get around to making an entry about it here. I will, I promise. But in the meantime, here's a link to a news story about it:

http://www.mlive.com/living/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2009/10/nerve-stimulation_implants_eas.html

Anyway, it seems a little extreme, but I can't say as I really feel that great about taking triptans 10-15 times a month. The literature that comes with the prescriptions says something about an increased risk of stroke, which is something that concerns me.

Soooo... I will try to get to that post about neurostimulation soon, I promise, oh my vast audience of avid followers!

Coenzyme Q10

I thought, for the sake of my fellow sufferers out there (none of whom seem to be reading me, but oh well) I'd talk a little about Coenzyme Q10, which has improved my quality of life lately. I superstitiously fear to say anything in case I somehow jinx myself -- but just in case it could help anyone else, I feel obliged to put in my two cents on the subject.

I have other things going on -- other treatments I'm looking into, but I'll try to get to that soon. Hopefully I will have good things to report -- but there are tedious complications to getting cleared through insurance etc. and I don't feel up to delving into all that in my currently scattered state of mind.

Anyway -- I don't remember where I read about CoQ10. But I read about a clinical trial that showed a good percentage of people who took the supplement for four months and reported a 50 percent reduction of headaches. Well -- 50 percent isn't anywhere close to where I'd like to get, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

I bought the stuff and took the first dose before leaving the parking lot of the health food store. I was feeling that familiar queasy, pre-headache pain that has become such a source of dread for me -- always wondering if it' going to stay a headache, or if it's going to segue into the horror of migraine. Anyway, it seemed to help right away. And I began taking it every day. I wasn't sure how much to take at first. I think in the study it said something about people taking between 100 and 300 mg -- or maybe I read that somewhere else. I started with 100, but that didn't seem quite enough, so I upped it to 200 after a few days.

Here's a weird thing -- in the research about using it for migraine, I read that it should be taken as a preventative, but wasn't effective to abort an attack, but one evening I was at work and felt a headache coming on and it was starting to ramp up and I didn't take medicine fast enough and I thought, "here we go." For some reason -- I don't remember really even thinking about why I was doing it -- I took another 100 mg of the CoQ10 -- and the headache faded away!

So -- pretty cool, right? I've used it a few times like that and it seems to work some of the time. BUT -- and of course there's a but -- there are some side effects and I've found I really shouldn't take more than 200 mg per day. Otherwise I get a fairly unpleasant stomach ache and it also aggravates my insomnia. But I feel that, at least for now, it has been helping me keep my medicine use in check. I'd been trying to alternate Exedrin with the Maxalt, but I guess I was using it too much because by the beginning of November it started really ripping up my stomach and I had to cut waaaaay back -- like I didn't take it for more than a month to make sure I gave my stomach lining time to recover. Since then, I've cautiously used it 2-3 times without too much distress, but I'm trying not to use it more than once or twice in any two week period.

So -- I would feel comfortable recommending CoQ10 to any migraine suffer. Possibly people with less medicine sensitivity than I would be able to use it without any side effects at all.

I'll get back to ya on the other stuff I mentioned.