Phase II

I visited my Doctor today and described how 8 paracetamol a day was not even controlling the powerful headaches from nitrate patches. He said unfortunately chronic headaches are a side effect for some people and my body is not really tolerant to them. It is also important to note that they didn't touch my angina.
Now he has prescribed a different medication which I start tomorrow. Calcium channel blockers which he says also help to prevent spasm, IF that is my problem. He has given me diltiazem 60mg x 3 a day.
Has anyone else here taken such medication? It says the side effects of these can also be headaches but he assures me that this is very rare. He also said if I get to the point of feeling so dizzy that I may faint, I should get straight to the hospital. Review in 2 weeks to see how they are working. Blood pressure today was 150/96.
120mg sounds a lot to me or maybe this is quite a weak medication?

[joanincarolina]

I take 60mg diltiazem 2x day and have even taken an extra 60 mg as a trial per day to help with symptoms. It reduces my spasms, it does not eliminate them totally. I had no side effects. I'd call diltiazem a very good med to reduce spasms.
You don't say what the patch dose is but headache is definitely a bother but as I increased my nitro dosage the headache and hollow headed feeling went away. It is a trial and error to get the right amount of both to settle down the spasms and eliminate the angina from the smaller microvessels which either need nitro to open them up more and/or the CCB to help with the spasms of those micros. Completely eliminate angina from MVD? Yes, it's called not moving.  Be patient. Joan.

[ed34]

Thank you Joan for your reply. As you can gather from my posts, I am always the odd ball out, the black sheep of medication/tests. I really don't know why. With nitrates, even the good old spray under the tongue, I get pains worse than a migraine. The only way to describe it is with each heart beat its like being hit on the back of the head with a baseball bat. They never seem to affect my angina either. What they do, which seems odd again, is make breathing more difficult, like my lungs are stiffer. I'm sure there must be clues in all this for an expert somewhere, apart from me be very odd. My Doctor wanted to put me on Ramapril (ace inhibitor) for my BP, but I emphasised that I want to establish IF I'm getting spasms, so he changed it to CCB.
I have kept a diary of my condition since I was diagnosed with MI, listing all tests, results and how I felt. I keep noticing when I look back through my diary that SOB was never a problem until I had CABG surgery. Even with a very thin LAD before the surgey, SOB was never a problem. My problems were always throat discomfort and chest pains. SOB appeared after the bypass and everyone kept telling me that it was normal and would eventually improve. I'm beginning to wonder if the surgeon has done something to cause this problem but what that could be is beyond me. My Doctor is referring me back to my local cardiologist, not the one who did the recent angioplasty, and I think I will be asking her to organise a CT of my heart. I want the complete anatomy checked over, not just the arteries. Maybe a nerve was damaged, but how would I ever know that? I wish I'd never had that cabg.
Sorry, forgot to answer the dosage question, the nitrate patches were just 5mg daily.