Sitrep: Post-Neuro 1.0

For those that are waiting with bated breath for the outcome of my latest adventures in VA medicine, good news! Of sorts, anyway.

Turns out that the Neurologist I was assigned to, Dr. Daniel, appears to be both competent and compassionate. Long story short, he listened to what Eden and I had to say, gave comprehensive questions and answers, and seems pretty much at the top of his game. He's setting me up with a new maintenance med (preventative, rather than rescue) for migraine, Gabapentin, which is another anti-seizure med that's shown promise in migraine as well. I have a bit of trepidation about this, given how the last anti-seizure, Topirimate, went, but I at least have the strong feeling that he'll listen if things start going wrong again, and he has a backup med to try if this one is ineffective (an injectable form, but I don't recall the name off the top of my head).

In addition to this, we ran another bank of blood work yesterday, and I'm due to be set up for a full head MRI shortly to update my imaging (last was a CT scan in 2003-2004) and rule out a number of the nastier potential developments that might be causing all this, as well as mapping any possible occlusions or deformations of my sinuses, since I seem to be at least somewhet reactive to strong weather or pressure changes lately.

I'll have to follow up with him today, however, as Eden was doing her normal caretaker best to figure me out, and stumbled upon the current Wikipedia article on Cluster Headaches. Now, I've seen this term before, and it seemed to fit to some degree according to the definition that was available at the time (a very brief Mayo Clinic writeup), but there just wasn't a whole lot of information to flesh things out and I deadended on that line of research and moved on. This article, however, appears to fit my current symptoms (or at least my perception of them) to a "T", so I'm going to at least leave a voicemail to that effect for Dr. Daniel when it's a reasonable hour to see what he has to say and see if any change in our treatment plan is warranted with this specific fit.

I have to say, the colloquial nickname for this style of headache, the "suicide headache", is frighteningly apt. I must confess, it's an idea that has at least been circling the drain in my darkest hours during the last week-and-a-half long migraine, thanks in no small part to the incredibly miniscule sleep I was able to obtain for the duration. For what it's worth, this kind of thinking is WAY outside of my normal thought patterns, and was one of the neon warning signs that motivated me to get to the ER stat.

In any case, I'm chalking things up as having one more doctor on my side, and have high hopes that we'll be able to make significant progress in at least slowing or controlling my advancing symptoms. Bonus points: our food stamps finally came through from the state, so I'm also trying an elimination diet to try to rule out possible allergy triggers or agrivators. We'll see how that goes - most of yesterday was spent just being ravenous, despite Eden's wonderful salmon dinner. I'd attribute that largely to caffeine detox, personally, as well as the horrible brain-piercing night I've had. Regardless of said discomfort, it's a heck of a lot easier to take when it feels like I'm finally moving (or at least lurching) forward again.