[Guest]

I'm wondering if anyone has any related stories to mine...
I'm an 18 year old female from Pennsylvania. I've had pretty nasty headaches for the past 4-5 years, and within the past 2 years, they've become daily. Mixed in with these daily headaches are migraines which occur weekly, if not more often. I saw a neurologist in February of '04. The MRI was inconclusive, aside from suggestions of ischemic disease, and other possibilities that to my neurologist at the time, seemed "unlikely". In April, I was at school when I suddenly had sharp pain in my left temple, nausea, inability to speak, and I all but fell out of my chair and blacked out. I had an emergency MRI, as my neurologist thought I may have had a mini-stroke. This MRI showed a 1cm pineal "cyst" (which I now know cyst means nothing except unidentified mass).
I switched neurologists two more times after that. I've been on every preventative medication, which have left me with all kinds of stomach problems (IBS, etc.) because of the rough effects of the medications. The headaches have not diminished at all.
Since, my newest neurologist had me tested for epilepsy with an EEG test (my cousin has epilepsy), which came back negative. I'm supposed to have a sleep-deprived EEG to rule out epilepsy entirely.
My symptoms have suddenly gotten worse. I've had a migraine for the past 5 days. I'm dizzy and nauseous. I had a partial seizure at college in my dorm room (half my skull went numb, and I smelled ammonia, when there was no smell). I have bad anxiety and the very top of my spine hurts all of a sudden. I can also sleep for 20 hours at a time and still be tired. I'd sleep forever if someone let me. At college I did really bad second half because I slept through my classes constantly. The three alarms I own couldn't wake me up! Sometimes I'd get up and black back out and wake up at 6pm thinking it was still 9am! I have no idea what to make of this. I should have had another MRI to follow up on the cyst, but my new neurologist thinks it's a waste of time. I don't know what to do about the situation.
Please help!

[psycoanne]

Every year I go through an episode of migraines that lasts up to six weeks. Three per week. No medication has helped in any way. I think the worst part is the hang overs afterwards. Due to these migrianes, daily headaches, and all of the symptoms that go along with them, I started to educate myself. I have found every neurologist is unwilling to think beyond their text book learning, and when I meet a new neurologist, I must teach them. I finally saw a chiropractor, who explained a reason for some of my headaches. My first vertebre is jammed up into my skull. I now where ortho shoe inserts that help a bit. I have found that education is the best path for me. I have also found that with the onset of a migraine, I take a heavy duty muscle relaxant. All it does is let me sleep, but that is better than the pain. Maybe the reason you feel so tired, even after 20 hours of sleep is because your quality of sleep is very poor. This is my case. I do not get enough deep sleep so that my body can re-coop during the nite. I have learned that mild exercise, i.e. mall walking, helps to keep my muscles working, so that when I do sleep, they do not tense up as much, hence a better nite of sleep. Stress can ruin any quality sleep I try to get also. I try to de-stress mysle before bedtime, and listen to pleasent music while I sleep. I do not take meds to sleep because I find that I will sleep for 3-4 hours and am than up for the rest of the nite. Good luck!