Medical stuff: a recap

[feuervogel]

Since late June, I have:

- had a gallbladder ultrasound (negative for stones)
- been tested for food allergies, celiac disease, parasites, C. diff (all negative)
- had an upper endoscopy (normal)
- been on two rounds of antibiotics for presumptive sinus infection
- had a rhinoscopy (normal)
- had a sinus CT (normal - no sign of recent infection, either)
- been to the dentist to evaluate upper jaw/gum pain (just a torus)

I'm still having this weird, annoying pain and tingling around my left eye (which usually starts around 1 pm), and my ears are ringing.

The ENT is referring me to the headache center, a group of neurologists, because she thinks I may have a variant migraine. Considering that I have a history of migraines (which hit their peak of awfulness in 2005/06 while I was in Oregon, when I would have 2-3 migraines during my menstrual period and none the rest of the month) going back to at least 1999, I consider this a reasonable suggestion. (I've also been describing this facial pressure as "half a migraine," or "like my prodrome or aura, but without the part where my head goes in the vice at the end.")

I'm not sure it explains the whole nausea and vomiting thing, though. I don't know how long it'll be until I can get in to the neuro people.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

That could be migraine. It wouldn't be my first thought, but it wasn't your doctors first thought either. Nausea is very common with migraines, and vomiting is not uncommon. It's also possible to have a migraine without the headache pain part of it. Migraines being a whole cluster of symptoms, you can have a migraine with any particular symptom being absent.

If that is what you have, I hope it will respond to migraine drugs.

[feuervogel]

The article on Medscape I read about variant migraine said that a lot of patients have a lot of unnecessary and invasive testing before being sent to a neuro :P Of all the variants listed, basilar fits the best, I think.

I don't want any of the prophylaxis meds. They have side effects worse than the disease.

[leora.livejournal.com]

That is a neat article! I wonder how many of my symptoms are actually linked to my migraines. I didn't realize that vertigo in the absence of clear migraine was also linked to migraines.

*nods* Meds aren't right for everyone. It really depends how many problems things are causing you. I'm hoping to find a triptan that works for me without having bad side effects for me, but if not, I will stick with pain killers now and then. But my migraines are probably usually more typical, and can be quite debilitating.

[feuervogel]

It's hard to find good info via google, because there are so many bad info sites out there. I stick to sources I trust (Medscape, university med schools, hospitals, sometimes WebMD, the national library of medicine (which has a really nice patient-oriented site now)).

I used to have much more typical migraines (with classic auras, like scintillating scotomas and facial tingling), but I didn't get any for a couple years, then I got like one or two in two years. Now this. Relpax worked fine for me then, no idea if it would help with this. (And my tablets went out of date 2 years ago anyway.) I had Imitrex IM once, and I got a nasty rebound headache.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Imitrex is terrible for me. The pills do nothing at all. The subcutaneous injection got rid of my migraine but had utterly awful side effects that were worse than a migraine. I liked cafergot as a preventative, but it's no longer in fashion. But I think some of the other triptans might work for me. I get scintillating scotoma periodically; it's kind of neat actually if not for the pain that usually happens. I also get other weird visual hallucinations that are remininescent of Van Gogh backgrounds sometimes. And flashing lights, which I hate. And closing my eyes doesn't help, because I still see them, best I can do is have other light around so I don't notice the flashing.

Migraines are really rather fascinating, but obnoxious things.

I do like WebMD, the CDC, and a few others. It is hard to get good info. And a lot of my info is no longer up to date, plus my memory is not perfect. I used to read articles on migraines in the journals my father got, but that was ages ago.

[feuervogel]

Yeah, if the neat pictures didn't presage excruciating pain, they'd be pretty cool. I'm tired of this damn tinnitus at the moment, though.

They've gone away from the vascular hypothesis for migraine and toward cortical spreading depression. That's just in the last couple years, because when I was in school, it was the vascular hypothesis. (The wikipedia article isn't too bad.)