Has anyone else ever been through anything like this?

This is gonna be alot to swallow, but I am truly st the end of my rope and need another avenue of support. I welcome any advice or well, anything. I need some outside advice, I am sorry if this message is long. PLEASE HELP!!!

I have always had headaches off and on, but nothing that severly interfered with my life. Over this summer, I began having crippling headaches that never stopped. Not long after that I started having weird female symptoms, such as spotting for 5 weeks straight.

I had been referred to a neurologist, who I really like and respect. I feel like he is trying to help me. I have had many tests run, and everything seemed to be coming back normal. I have a slipped disk in my neck, but I have been told and told again that while that can cause heachaches, not the kind I have been having.

My whole face hurts. The very back of my head is where is seems to have the most tension. However, the pain is throughout my head at different times, including my entire head, my face, my ears and especially behind my eyes. On a scale of 1-10, my pain varies from a 6-10, all the time. I have no sensitivity to light and sound, and have been told over and over again they are not migraines.

The pain is continuous. I am on different medications, and I do not like taking pills. I have come to where I have no choice. My doctor has been adjusting the strong medications to try to stop me from developing dependancy. I even have to go the hospital frequently, leave work, to get shots of demerol, phenegren, and thorozine when I cannot take the pain. The medicine barely fazes me!

Every day is a struggle to live. I had 2 occiptical nerve blocks done and they both made everything worse. Every procedure makes it worse. I cannot live this way, and am on the verge of I do not know what.

My MRI came back with a brain abnormaility. I have a tiny tear in my basil artery. My neurologist, who is very well-respected, says that I was born with it and there is no way my pain is being caused from that. I try not to do much research on my own, it makes me crazy. But I had to research the basil artery, and it is the most important artery for blood supply to the brain. How could this not affect me if they can find nothing else?

While all this has continued, my female problems became worse and I almost bled to death, although my periods have always been light. I had to have emergency surgery, and I have severe endometriosis and both my ovaries were over 4-5 normal size. I am now on hormones to try to combat the constant face heat with no fever, and my uncontrolable emothions. I am only 29. This is a whole different situation, but the hormone problems are most likely contributing to my headaches to a degree.

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Hi! Since you have a headache almost daily, what you have is in all probability not a simple migraine but a chronic daily headache (CDH). This can be the primary type—without any cause. One simple reason for daily headaches with nausea is compression of cervical spinal nerves. Another reason is TMJ, especially if the headache starts with chewing. The third reason could be severe acidity with or without GERD. The CDH could also be secondary to trauma, raised intracranial hypertension, high blood pressure, temporal arteritis etc. Hence all these need to be ruled out.  If the headache lasts for less than 4 hours then it could be a chronic cluster headache or a chronic paroxysmal hemicranias. If it lasts for more than 4 hours it could be chronic tension headache, chronic migraine or altered migraine or hemicranias continua. Indomethacin is the drug of choice in hemicranias continua. In fact the diagnosis is considered confirmed if a patient responds to Indomethacin. Please consult your gynecologist and rule out hormone imbalance and low estrogen as the cause of your headaches. Since a confirmed diagnosis cannot be given on net please discuss these possibilities with your doctor once. Take care!