Waves 

  
I’ve talked about my cluster headaches before, and since I’ve been on my new medication, they have greatly improved. I’ve gone from chronic cluster headaches to more episodic ones. The way that I always describe them is that they feel like an ice pick driven in my eye and it comes out the lower back of my head. I titled this post waves because when I have one, it comes and goes in waves, like I am riding waves at the beach. When you are at the crest of the wave is when the headache is most intense and then it eases off as you go down into the trough of the wave until it is almost completely gone before building in intensity once again and the cycle begins again. Since I started on my new medicine, I get these headaches much less frequently but also the waves are like being out in the ocean, that point where your feet can touch the sand when the waves is in its trough and then it lifts you up as the wave rises. Before my new medicine, it was like I was caught in the breakers. Each wave came crashing down, sometimes knocking me down and just as I would get up, I was hit again and when there was relief it was ever so very slight but the pain never completely went away because I was constantly being hit by the waves and being pulled down.
  

None of this may make any sense, but yesterday I had a cluster headache all day. As I road the “waves” throughout the day, I kept thinking of this analogy. It’s the best way I can think to explain it. Also, I wrote this when o was in one of the low troughs, so the pain had eased, but I can tell that it’s not gone away completely. I’m hoping that I will feel better today.