My name is Mike and I live in western kentucky. I was very happy to
find this group hoping that I might gain some insight in what
approach other people are taking with there headaches.

It's June 2006, I'm at work, a supervisor at a facility for psych
patients, when I'm assaulted by a patient I had worked with for 6
years. About a week later I awake around 4am with a massive
debilitating headache and vomitting. I goto my family MD and receive
shots for nausea, and pain, then home to bed. The headache went away,
but came back a few days later, so I called the doc and he referred
me to a neurologist. I had a series of x-rays, ct scans, mri, and all
test were negative. The only test I didn't have done was a lumbar
puncture. The headache contiuned non-stop for about two months. We
tried 3 vaso-dialators imitrex, max-alt, dhe, and I did not respond
to any of them. The neurologist suggested a kind of headache cocktail
which consisted of amitriptyline 50mg (three times per day), inderal
40mg (three times per day), indomiacin 50mg (three times per day),
and phenergan 25mg (three times per day). I literally sat at home and
drooled on myself for about a month, but the headache broke up and
went away. This ends around late August and I get back to work and
start backing off the meds.

Jump to present day, I changed jobs to reduce stress, I only take
inderal 40mg (one time per day) and then bam out of no where my old
friend returns. About 2-3 weeks ago we got up and within the first
hour of being awake I was in severe pain and dry heaving. I took
phenergan for the nausea and went on with my day, but the headache
kept getting worse and worse. I went to the ER and got a shot of
stadol/phenergan, and was told to follow up with my family doc, and
talk about using a stadol inhaler as a abortive medication. My doc
was reluctant, but agreed to let me try the inhaler (he says my
headaches are muscular and not vascular). I made it about a week and
a half and then bang, a massive headache comes out of nowhere, so I
took a phenergan and did one spray of stadol. It worked like a charm,
but less than a week later, another headache worse than the last, so
again I take a phenergan, but this time did two sprays of stadol
(which is equivalent to a 2mg injection that is used in the ER). It
worked, but with a slight amount of disforia (side effects of the
stadol). Two days ago I got another headache, tried tylenol, and
after one hour, I took a phenergan and did two sprays of stadol. This
time things went wrong, very wrong. The stadol depressed my respitory
system to the point that I thought I was going to stop breathing. It
scared me to death. My chest felt like someone was sitting on top of
me, my heart was hurting, and I felt prickly all over.....we should
have called 911, but I sat in the living room with my wife for 4
hours, making her keep me awake. She monitored my pulse and breath
rate (my pulse was around 72 and my breath rate was about 11-12
breaths per minute). I now work at the ER and I talked to the doc
there yesterday about my experience, he says it could be disforia,
but probably was an alergic reaction to the stadol and I shouldn't
take it any more.

So, I'm back to square one, I have no rescue medicine. My family doc
wants to discuss taking me off of inderal and putting me on topomax,
and I don't know what to do. The doc is also pushing the
amitriptyline, but I am fighting it. It makes we very lathargic and
hungover feeling, and I just don't want to go through that everyday.
I have been wondering if anyone has tried muscle relaxers as a
preventative medication?

Well, this is my story, I have to goto work, so I'll check in
tonight. Have a great day, and thanks for reading.

Mike