I’m in bed right now awake at 3:45 am waiting for a horrible hypnic headache to pass. The pain is extreme and I know everyone here understands completely. I have taken my caffeine and am waiting patiently and trying not to cry. This has been happening now every single night for weeks and each week the pain ratchets up a notch. The neurologists at my regional Headache Clinic confirm that this is hypnic headache although sometimes a migraine piggybacks on it. While caffeine and Imitrex eventually help, taking them every night has destroyed my waking life too since after taking caffeine I’m wide awake and grinding my teeth for the next four hours. This cycle happens every single day. Excruciating pain followed by upset stomach ,
drowsiness and depression. If this is my new normal then it’s time to research suicide because this quality of life is not sustainable for me. I’ll obviously think hard and consult a psychiatric specialist before taking any kind of action but if this severe daily pain is a permanent condition I don’t want to grind on for decades. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have this unbearable pain and also suffer from dementia. It could explain the patients screaming in nursing homes. Perhaps they are in the middle of a horrific migraine and no one knows or cares. I watched my beautiful mother—a triathlete who developed Alzheimer’s — weeping and thrashing in her bed, unable to speak and clearly suffering. The nursing staff couldn’t figure out what she was experiencing so just gave her Ambien. But what if it was acute migraine? Please god no one should suffer like that. Being trapped in this pain with no hope or help is my deepest fear. Doctors are sympathetic but in the end they DON’T know how you feel and can go home and forget about you. Which of course they do. It’s human nature. I’m realizing that ultimately the reality of a life dominated by pain will not be sustainable for me. Lots to think about.