Headaches gone!
One of my favourite Philosophy professors has this theory that most human pleasure is nothing more than the relief of, or absence of, some kind of negative stimulus. (This is part of a broader argument that we are all far less happy than we think, and life sucks etc which I won't get into now.) I'm not sure to what extent I agree with this view, but I'm damn sure that the absence of daily headaches is bloody marvelous and makes me want to jump in rain puddles and click my heels.
The short version of the long story is that after years of headaches, a ct-scan, two MRIs, a month of arthrexin and a lumbar puncture, no one has been to tell me what was causing headaches I was waking up with every morning. Every morning. For months.
I went to see a new doc who specialises in wimin troubles about three weeks ago and she put me on 10 mg of Trepiline (Amitriptyline)a night. This is a tricyclic antidepressant(apparently the normal dose for depression is between 30-100 mg) which was discovered to have analgesic effects when it was a standard treatment for cancer patients suffering from depression. The slightly freaky thing is that they don't know how or why it works.
But it does! I haven't had a morning headache since I started taking it, and although I've had one or two small tension headaches here and there they've been tiny and gone away after half an hour.
The side effects are a little weird though. This stuff really knocks me out and I'm only taking a tiny dose, I don't know how people on more manage to get out of bed at all. On the up side I'm getting the best sleep I've ever had and having vivid and exciting dreams with so much detail that I can't remember them for long after I wake up. For me this is very unusual as I remember most of my dreams, some of them for years.
Today is also day two of getting up at 5am to go to gym. My muscles are pretty achey but I haven't felt this good in years.
Could this stuff be making me a little manic?
I still get the killer PMS headache but I'll see how that goes next month as I'm also switching to a new Pill.
Better living through chemistry and all that.
The short version of the long story is that after years of headaches, a ct-scan, two MRIs, a month of arthrexin and a lumbar puncture, no one has been to tell me what was causing headaches I was waking up with every morning. Every morning. For months.
I went to see a new doc who specialises in wimin troubles about three weeks ago and she put me on 10 mg of Trepiline (Amitriptyline)a night. This is a tricyclic antidepressant(apparently the normal dose for depression is between 30-100 mg) which was discovered to have analgesic effects when it was a standard treatment for cancer patients suffering from depression. The slightly freaky thing is that they don't know how or why it works.
But it does! I haven't had a morning headache since I started taking it, and although I've had one or two small tension headaches here and there they've been tiny and gone away after half an hour.
The side effects are a little weird though. This stuff really knocks me out and I'm only taking a tiny dose, I don't know how people on more manage to get out of bed at all. On the up side I'm getting the best sleep I've ever had and having vivid and exciting dreams with so much detail that I can't remember them for long after I wake up. For me this is very unusual as I remember most of my dreams, some of them for years.
Today is also day two of getting up at 5am to go to gym. My muscles are pretty achey but I haven't felt this good in years.
Could this stuff be making me a little manic?
I still get the killer PMS headache but I'll see how that goes next month as I'm also switching to a new Pill.
Better living through chemistry and all that.