Chronic pain is difficult to treat, especially as headaches can have many different causes or, to current medical science, no understood cause at all.

Hopefully if this is a cross you must bare, this will be your only primary health issue for a good long while. Chronic pain is difficult to treat especially when multiple sources react differently to the meds. Ex I have about four non-diagnosis diagnosis, meaning they determine what you have is mostly what could not otherwise be rules out (like lyme disease, etc.). Occipital neuralgia, peripheral neuralgia and fibro myalgia and transform migraines. I've had an internal pump that feeds medications into my spine, this allows lower doses, as they don't get dilated in the digestive system etc, before reaching the optimal location for treatment. It's also supposed to drop the severity of negative side effects. My pump med works well especially for the limbs, joints, and skin. It doesn't knock down the head pain enough to return productive. But, going up on the pump med (Chlonadine) seems to make the head pain worse, at least for a few weeks afterward, so I'm scared to allow them to up that dose.

I too am on Esgic (Butalbital described above). It works much of the time to stop much of the higher level stabbing and brings the general level down. But the effects only seem to last about 2hr and cannot be repeated until 4hrs have elapsed, and really, for me, cannot be taken every four hrs as it does lead to nasty rebound and the caffeine makes getting more than 2 or 3 hrs of sleep, a night, almost impossible.
It also cannot really touch the worst episodes (the pain behavior I associate w/ the episodic migraines that would numb my face, hands, legs, etc., and throb high enough to cause severe nausea, heat, sound, and light intolerance. Those used to last typically 3 straight days.)

If the Drs and specialists you
see seem at all deaf or disbelieving of your descriptions, PLEASE bring someone to act as you advocate. Especially when you see a new medical profession for the 1st time. Current Dr offices might expect a consultation appointment to be scheduled when bringing your advocate. My advocate, my spouse, is MUCH better at describing my current quality if life and how my conditions interfere with occasionally playing the part of a human being.
Kindnof like a note from one's parent/guardian when missing a day of school, everyone, even the good drs, seems to listen/believe (?) her more readily.