location of headaches

[marjoryb]

I still have headaches     But, my headaches seem to be primarily frontal headaches.    The pain is intensified if I lower my head and it seems less painful if I stand up.    If I exercise, it feels like someone has put a swim cap on my head and tightened it (so - as you might guess, I'm not exercising and getting larger!).     I have other symptoms similar to you fellow headache sufferers - like waking up with headaches, stiffness in my neck, etc., but the pain of the headache is usually across my forehead and not at the incision site or behind my eye (I have had those and it feels like someone is stabbing knives into the back of my eyeball ).      In searching the web, frontal headaches are often sinus related.   My doctor (internist) suggested that I start taking Claritan and using Flonase nasal spray to see if the headaches are allergy/sinus related.    I'm waiting to be seen again by my neurologist, the headache clinic and the pain management clinic at Hopkins - but those appts are hard to get and I have to wait a month or more.

Do any of you have these frontal headaches?  Have your headaches changed over the period of your recovery?   I'm at just about 3 1/2 years and the headaches have changed .

Marjoryb

[Captain Deb]

My headaches start with neck pain, then a single point in the back of my head on the surgical side starts zinging away, then the pain crawls up the back of my head and lodges behind my left eyeball.  When that occipital trigger point starts pulsing, I head straight for the Imitrex! In the almost seven years since my surgery, my headaches have gone from severe daily, to mild daily with severe weekly.  They were slightly better when I was on Topamax and Neurontin, but the meds were leaving me really foggy and depressed, so I decided to see what life was like without them.  Not fun.  What has been most helpful for me has been Depomedrol nerve blocks and I'm trying Botox in January. I need to be medication-free for those to see if they work.

Capt Deb