hypnic headaches - new to group

hi there, gang -
my name is evi and i'm a headache sufferer. i have had migraines for many years. when i was younger they were much worse, but now they're thankfully occasional. but now i'm having a new kind of headache, and it's about A MILLION times worse than my migraines ever were.
they started out waking me up in the middle of the night, but more and more often they come in the daytime too now. they start with a sharp pain in my left ear and then in a couple of minutes it feels like my head is gonna explode. it's completely debilitating. all i can do is lie down with an ice pack and wail in pain. even creating tears hurts. and this torture lasts only about 15 minutes. then i come out of it and feel generally fine....tired, but fine. i can have 2 or 3 of these episodes in a day or night, and they are terrifying. i become terribly nauseous (so far no vomiting), and really badly short of breath. i find it very hard to get a good lungful of air and feel quite dizzy and disoriented.
had a cranial mri that came back clean, but i think i'm dying over here.
anyone have any experience with something like this???? oddly, there are NO headache support groups in the entire state i live in!!!

glad to be here, and hope to get some great info and meet some new friends!
evi

forgot to introduce myself -
my name is evi, and i'm a 44 yr old caucasian woman. i started having migraines (feel like a little man wearing spurs riding my right optic nerve) in the early 90s. as i mentioned, they have faded in frequency and seriousness and are much less of a problem for me now.
i thought my eyes might be part of the problem with my headaches, so i had a test:20/20. i also was concerned about my hearing, and did find that my hearing is beginning to fail, with the erosion being worse on the left side than the right, by a tiny bit. the doc thinks this is due to something called otosclerosis, which is a fusing of the bones of the inner ear. it is supposed to be very slow-progressing, but i never do anything by the book so you never know!!

i live in portland oregon with my husband, 6.5 yr old daughter, dog, cat, chickens and fish.

Hi Evi. Welcome. I have not experienced this, but from the description it sounds a bit like cluster headaches. They are of an intense but short duration like that. Did your doctor say anything about that?

I was thinking they sounded like cluster headaches as well. Same family as migraines, but very intense but short duration. I'd ask the doctor if he thinks that may be what's going on.

Evi, hi, from the other side of Oregon.

Your short term, frequent headaches sound like cluster headaches to me, as well.

saw a doc today who suggested they may be rebound headaches. what do you guys know about those? (frankly, i don't think that's the answer, but want to look into it.)

MOH can occur. But typically only if you are taking pain relief medicine very frequently, like daily. My doctor says no more than three times per week on any pain medicine. Some people have found that going cold turkey with no pain medicine for a few weeks reduced their frequency of migraines. But many of us, myself included, didn't find that it really helped any with either frequency nor duration.

But honestly, the really short, intense headaches you describe does not sound like rebound. Did you see a neurologist who specializes in migraines and headaches? Or are you seeing a general practitioner.

i was SHOCKED to learn that there are NO headache clinics in portland oregon. none. zippo. there aren't even any docs who specialize in headaches at the general neurology clinic at oreon health and science university (our big hospital). don't quite know what to do!

Welcome to our group.
Ask your doctor to get you an oxygen tank to use when the headache hits.
This is the treatment for cluster headaches. If this helps it will help isolate the problem. I can't believe there are no migraine specialists there. Do they think they don't exist there? Very strange.
Kathy