wkpro wrote:robysue wrote:I feel like my headaches and fatigue may have even ramped up a bit, especially the headaches.
Are you taking medication for the headache pain on a regular basis? Even OTC stuff like Tylenol or Ibuprophen?
And have you ever been diagnosed with migraines or even simple, but severe tension headaches? The sensory overload from the CPAP can aggravate any of these kinds of headaches that have "triggers". It takes time for the body to adjust and learn to ignore the sensory stuff so that it doesn't trigger the headaches as frequently.
I have been taking tylenol in the mornings to combat it.
Every morning? Almost every morning? If so, then my bet is on Rebound Headaches.
You need to talk to your PCP about the fact that you are taking tylenol every morning for headache pain. He should send you to a neurologist. Chances are, the first thing you'll have to deal with is Rebound Headaches. And then you'll have to deal with figuring out what the underlying headaches are. It can be a long process. You may need to keep a headache journal. (When did the headache hit? How bad is the pain? What kind of pain? Where is the pain? Did you take anything? How well did it work? Did the headache come back a few hours later?)
The headaches are so "broad" that I often described it to my docs as feeling hungover, and most of them seemed to take a depression/anxiety standpoint from there on, which, again, was never successful.
Since you've described the headaches as "broad" and used an analogy to feeling hungover, it doesn't surprise me that they've been shoved into the "depression/anxiety" category.
To get a doc to correctly evaluate headache pain requires that you describe the pain much more precisely in the vocabulary of headaches. And many folks with chronic headache pain can describe their pain in exquisite detail with vivid imagery. (There's plenty of macabre artwork drawn by headache sufferers in an effort to help visualize their particular pain so others can understand it.) When describing headaches to doctors it's important to describe:
- How they hurt (the quality of the pain)
- Where where they hurt (the location of the pain)
- Severity of the pain
- Onset of the pain (in two senses: When do the individual headaches tend to start? And when did the headaches first become noticeable?)
- Length of the pain (how long they last)
- Frequency of the pain (how often you get them)
- Response to self treatment (both what you do to alleviate the pain and how well it works.)
Describing the
quality of the pain is critically important: The typical vocabulary for describing the
quality of headache pain are words like "dull", "sharp", "stabbing" or "throbbing". My guess is that your pain is "dull pain"---as in "it's just there and kind of equally painful every where it hurts and it doesn't feel like an ice pick being thrust into your head or an ax cleaving your skull ("stabbing" and "splitting" pain respectively) and it doesn't feel like you can hear or feel your heartbeat or pulse in your head ("throbbing") and the pain doesn't wax and wane on a periodic basis every few seconds to minutes (also "throbbing"). "Dull" pain can also sometimes be described as if you've got an overtight wide band around your head and someone is (very, very) slowly tightening the already too tight band. In other words, "dull" pain often feel a bit like pressure being applied to your head or your head being squeezed in a vice. And it's critically important to keep in "dull" pain does not mean "mild" or "moderate" pain. Dull pain can hurt like the dickens, but it's "dull" in the sense of not being clearly defined and clearly localized.
The typical vocabulary for describing
location of the pain has two parts: First there is "bilateral" vs. "unilateral" pain. Pain on both sides of the head is bilateral; pain on one side is unilateral. Then there's the actual location of the pain---if it's well defined: "Over my left eyebrow", "In my jaw joint", "back of my head", "crown of my head", "in my cheeks" are all examples of localized pain descriptions. If the pain seems to be all over or doesn't have real clear boundaries, it's said to be "generalized" or "whole head". My guess from your description of it feeling like a hangover is that you've either got generalized pain OR its pain that's focused behind your eyes. And probably bilateral. But that's just based on my rather limited experiences from being hungover in college a very long time ago.
For severity of the pain, most people stick to words like "mild", "moderate", "severe". But other more colorful descriptors of "severe" abound. Often a headache doctor will ask you to rate the pain on a scale from 0--10 where 0=NO PAIN at all and 10=Most severe pain you can imagine. I haven't a clue as to what level of pain your headaches are.
For Onset: Do you wake up with the headache? In other words is it there the instant you open your eyes while you are still in bed? Or does it start later? With breakfast perhaps? Have you had these headaches for years? Have they gotten worse or better since starting CPAP?
For Length: How long do they last if you don't take the Tylenol? All day? Or only a couple of hours? How long do they last with the Tylenol? A few minutes? A couple of hours? All day?
For Frequency: Do you have this particular kind of headache every day? 5 or more times a week? 3--4 times a week (every other day?) 1-2 times a week? 1-2 times a month? Irregularly?
For Response: How well does the Tylenol work? Does it merely lessen (dampen/dull) the pain? Or does it eliminate the pain? Have you had to increase the amount of Tylenol you take in order to get the same response?
