If this is sinusitis--is there really no option for the excruciating pain I'm feeling?

[daniebelle]

I've had migraines my entire life.  One of my earliest childhood memories in the early 1980s is of having pain behind my left eye so intense that I was using the corner of the couch to put pressure that seemed to somehow help at the time.  My mom took to me to the doctor several times.  They would always do the same thing--first x-ray my head.  Some of the time they pointed out it was sinusitis.  Other times they told my mom that I was clearly either exaggerating or making up the pain to get out of school.  I wasn't making it up.  

So for a long part of my life I've just dealt with it.  When I was 17 I had the first migraine that I couldn't deal with.  The pain was so intense it was unbearable.  My grandma was on hospice dying of terminal lung cancer at the time.  I was lucky that a hospice nurse got very concerned and called my doctor for me.  I was the type of teen that wasn't going to the doctor unless by ambulance.  I never was really sick anyway at that point in my life.  But the hospice nurse called my doctor and spoke to him--and he prescribed me imitrex injections.  I was terrified of these injections.  But lucky for me the hospice nurse was able to give it to me.  And it worked.  I just had the after headache I can't quite explain to anybody where the pain was.  But I couldn't give myself an injection.  I didn't even trust my parents to do it.  So I put myself through a lot of pain only able to actually use the shot myself once or at the most twice.  So from 17 till 21 I kind of just dealt with the pain.  When it got too bad I'd take nyquil because it would at least let me attempt to sleep it off.  Which never worked.  So at 21 I finally went back to my MD about my migraines.  He gave me a lot of different samples to try.  None of which made a dent.  So he prescribed me imitrex pills.  They made me feel worse.  Imitrex pills actually made me feel like someone was crushing my chest and my heart was about to stop--plus nausea.  I knew that the injections would still be worthless to me, because I was terrified of the needle.

I don't know why, but I feel like I'm more of a wimp now.  There have been several ER trips in the last 3 years where I just couldn't take the pain anymore.  I couldn't.  And I needed to feel like I was doing something about it because it was unbearable anyway--but the idea that I'm not actively trying to get the ice-pick/vise out of my left eye was too much.  Each time they gave me morphine shots which didn't help the pain but made the pain not so important while in the ER.  But then when at home it was the same.

I went to the doctor 9 months ago and said give me the imitrex injections.  And after everything in life, the needle isn't that bad.  I've had surgery once and blood tests so many times in the past 10 years that its not that scary.  And my husband is trusted enough to give met he injections.

The injections work I guess.  But not all the time.  I'm going through hell right now.  And I've noticed that every single spring and autumn I have so many more episodes than at any other time.

I'm trying so hard to figure it out.  My regular MD said it could be my sinusitis pushing over into a migraine.  And I suppose it could.  I'm a high strung person with a life history of sinusitis and tension headaches.  I know that I suffer more when the weather changes abruptly.  I live in Southern California.  In spring and autumn it can be as low as 50 degrees at night and 85 degrees at the hottest point of the day.  And every single time it does that, my head kills me.  In the winter and summer there is a more constant in the highs and lows--and it seems to not be a factor.

And the imitrex isn't working when I'm having these kinds of headaches.  

If this is sinusitis--is there really no option for the excruciating pain I'm feeling?  

I'm in hell right now.  I've had two imitrex shots this morning and and my head still aches behind my left eye as always.  

I appreciate the time anyone took to read this!
Danielle

[daniebelle]

I often feel sick.  Like I live nearly everyday with some sort of headache pain.  Lots of times I feel sick constantly.  Like on some days when I don't wake up with a headache, I actually feel like I've got the flu.  I feel heavy, stiff, the muscles in my legs ache.  I'm always sick one way or another.  It has become just a battle between which will bother me the most.  Sometimes I have such acute pain in my left leg that moves from the tips of my toes to the top of my thigh above the inside of my knee.  The past month I've had a lot of congestion.  I woke up strangling on phlegm in my throat last week.  And my eyes are always watery.  When I was younger I used to wear a lot of eye make-up.  But my eyes water so much and I would inevitably smudge it.  When I lay my head down...whatever eye is closest to the pillow tears will stream from it.

I was in the doctors office a month ago and he said it looked like I was having some kind of allergy attack cause my eye was red in some way.  But I wasn't congested and had probably a mild headache that day.  

I don't know.  I feel like my doctor thinks I'm a hypochondriac to be honest.  He's always been good to me.  But I can't make him understand somehow that I don't feel "GOOD" that often.  It's like I live every day with a flu-like illness.  I don't know. lol.

But I do have the hot flashes and then I'll get the chills.  I can't find a happy medium in tempature.  I sweat when my skin is cold--that awful clammy feeling.  But its my neck that hurts...not my spine.

I feel insane.  I don't know.  But I woke up again with another headache this morning.  My Birthday is tomorrow LOL and I just hope I don't feel to bad then =)

I just began tracking my migraines on here.  I want to figure out.  I'd like to know more--if you want you can add me as a friend =)

-Danielle

[antiphonal]

I too have migrains that I swear are caused by sinus infections, although I know I cannot have consistant infections, when I get a Z pac or other such meds, I feel better for a short while.  Then it starts all over again.  With the hot flashes, spine pain and diariara that I have had for months, I wonder if I really do have an infection that no one has seen.  I do have a bent nasal septum that causes me not to be able to have regular discharge from the front of my sinus. But I do get a lot of discharge down my throat which makes my stomach upset and makes everything worse.  Do you have any other symptoms?