Day 3


Slept from 11pm to 7am, quite disturbed sleep (8hrs).
Had bran & multigrain shapes w skimmed milk for breakfast, quite headachy, medium to bad by 8.40. Had stuff to do on computer, its painful & sound is bothering me a little too.
Took two paracetamol with water & a cuppa at 9.30 (prompted by my husband James - I am prone to not taking medicine & trying to put up with it on my own).
10.30 had some skips type crisps, then a mini cornish pasty & glass water.
11.20 another 1/2 mug of tea, headache still medium verging on bad.
12.15 leftover chilli & rice, glass water.
headache almost gone by 12.30 - halfway through eating a very filling lunch.
1pm headache gone, made a cup of tea
watched tv, at 2.30 head still good
3pm school run, pushing pushchair, neck really hurting before the end of my road.


Here I should explain that I have had a swelling to the left side of my neck for about 17 years, it seems to me that the supporting tendon at the back swells & is painful, and seems to interfere with some sort of drainage through to my ear too. The worst point is where my neck/the meets the back of my skull. I had physio which just made it worse back when it first occurred, and it has been pretty much ignored by various GP's over the years. It came on about a year after I started getting numbness, shaking & severe crushing pain first in my hand & wrist of my left arm (I am left handed) which progressively travelled up the nerve on the outside of hand & arm, was bad in my elbow joint, and finally in my neck too. It was diagnosed as a Repetitive Strain Injury and I had to give up my job in a library (and have not worked since). The pain and weakness have taken about 15 years to almost completely go, with my neck being the only thing that still seriously bothers me.


by 4pm, on return home, feeling slightly sick & dizzy as well as in a lot of pain but its more in my neck than the behind the eye headache. Had a glass of water and two jellybabies.
4.30 sat in a chair with good back & neck support, wore jumper that covers my neck, had cup of tea, went on laptop, watched tv, started to feel better but chills & goose pimples all over. Read from 5 to 5.30, headache returning light to medium.
Had dinner, 3 fish fingers & salad, 2 slices brown toast & peanut butter, glass of water. By 6.30 feeling almost completely better, went & sat down with cup of tea & laptop.
8.15 another tea with biscuits, watched tv.
9pm been on laptop too, getting a bit eye achy, glasses out.
10pm, about to go to bed when persuaded by daughter to stay up, had white toast, yoghurt & coriander dip & olives washed down with water.


5 1/2 cups of tea
very overcast dull day, light rain

here is my first diary entry;


Day 1
I am female, caucasian, 43 years old. Married, not working, mother of three.
When I weigh myself on the Wii, I am always near the "overweight" section, but never in it. I don't smoke, or drink except for very occasionally.
I have had a headache for five weeks.
It is behind my left eye, which feels hot & constricted.
I have better days & worse days, but it has been there every day.
I am not nauseous, nor have been sick at all.
I am a little dizzy quite often.
I have been having difficulty with spelling & getting words right when speaking.
I feel better when eating & immediately after a meal (no effect from snacks).
Sometimes I wake with the pain at varied times of the night.
Sometimes when I get up in the morning it seems to be better, then kicks in 10-15 mins after getting up.
Sometimes it is there before I get up.
As it gets worse, I am finding bright lights & noise bother me.
Physical activity does not make it worse.
I was not depressed or stressed in the weeks before it started (now, however...).
I find (in order of painfulness) reading, using the computer, and watching television uncomfortable now.
But lying in a quiet room intensifies the pain, I am much happier distracted.




Today (2nd May), I have decided to change my diet to a simple one for a week, keeping away from likely trigger foods & document what I do & eat to see if there are any changes in how I feel.


I slept last night from 11pm to 8.15 this morning - I was woken briefly at 6.30 by the headache though.
I took 3 dispersible aspirin (900mg) on waking - head was already quite bad.
I had cereal with skimmed milk (a mix of cornflakes, rice crispies & bran as my usual muesli has nuts in which I am trying to avoid).
I had a cup of tea at about 9.30 & 2 slices of brown bread & marge, went on the laptop.
I had another tea just before 11, didn't drink it all.
My husband drove us to the supermarket at 11, I was bothered by my headache quite a bit while trying to shop.
For lunch at 12.30 I had 2 mini cornish pasties, olives, lettuce, tomatoes & yellow pepper, followed by another tea, which I only drank half of, and a biscuit.
I did some very heavy lifting in the garden with my husband after lunch, felt better for a while, I think from the fresh air, headache back to normal but no worse after the lifting.
Sat down at 2.40 & had 3 dispersible aspirin, another tea & back on the laptop for 20 min, then went & did school run. Another tea & 4 chocolate mini cakes (only just realised as writing this I shouldn't have had them!) when back from school, read my book for a while.
Moved some boxes upstairs before dinner, which was fish pie (with prawns & mashed potato), green beans & tinned fruit cocktail.
After dinner sat down to write some more of this with another tea. Headache at a medium I'd say, aspirin are wearing off.
At 9pm I had some white bread with low fat cream cheese & sweet chilli sauce & noticed that my headache was almost completely gone, despite 2 hrs on the laptop. 9.30 had a few pieces dried fruit, watching tv since 9 as well as on the computer.


So that's -
    9 hours sleep
    5 cups of tea
    some choc covered cake squares
    a lot of heavy lifting
    2 doses of aspirin (900mg per dose)
headache medium all day, until about 9pm when almost completely gone
lovely sunny day

So at the moment I am awaiting an appointment to see a specialist regarding my eye pain/headache. It got so bad over the weekend just gone that I made another appointment to see a GP at my practice yesterday. I saw a different doctor, who told me I probably, thought not definitely, had an opthalmic migraine, and should take 900mg aspirin 3 times daily. This was what I had already settled on as helping best, after trying almost every pain relief available, and told the doctor so. She asked on a scale of 1-10 how painful it was, and I said on better days a 5-6 and on the bad days 7-8. She said "oh moderate then" I didn't say anything but as I have had kidney stones & given birth three times I think 9 & 10 are surely reserved for screaming out loud intolerable agony. She said that migraine are caused by chemical changes, and not as such anything to worry about, and to avoid cheese, chocolate & coffee. My blood tests on my thyroid levels had come back normal.


Now I wasn't best pleased at being written a prescription (£7 - of course I didn't fill it) for a packet of aspirin that costs 29p at the supermarket, for a medicine that I had told my GP I was already taking (for the last 2 weeks or so) and had come to them in desperation because of this debilitating headache I'd had for 5 weeks + now. I looked up opthalmic migraine when I got home and saw that its defining feature is optical disturbance of some sort - which I had told the doctor (and optician) I don't have. And an optical migraine will have passed within 1/2 to 1 hour of it beginning!


I don't usually drink coffee (or alcohol), or regularly eat cheese or chocolate, but had been visiting my mother a couple of weeks into the headache at Easter, when I had coffee, cheese and chocolate. It made no difference to my headache as far as I can remember. A couple of weeks ago I fancied a little Muscatel with my Sunday lunch, and had a tiny glass maybe 2cm full of it - my headache became terrible & persisted all night. That was the only time I have had alcohol in the duration of my whole headache,and I don't think I'd had any immediately before, either.


The reason I am here today, is that I am going to try and document anything that changes my headache, whether for better or worse, by keeping a diary.

Another couple of weeks passed, I still had this headache in varying strength every day. It got so bad while I was waiting for the blood test results, that one afternoon I walked into town & into opticians until I got seen. A great opthalmologist at Specsavers listened to my woes, did a full set of tests & ruled out an infection or a return of my Graves. He did note a nevus (freckle) on the back of the affected eye, which I don't believe was there on any of my previous eye tests. This would not normally be a problematic growth, but it was close to my optic nerve and he wondered if it was pressing on it and causing the pain. He referred me to a specialist at the hospital, and did some further field of vision tests, which he said would determine how quickly I needed referral. It turned out I didn't need an urgent referral, so he commiserated and said it would take a few weeks for my appointment to be arranged.

A very long headache...

I'm starting this diary to try and make sense of this headache I have. As far as I can work out, I started noticing my sense of smell was increased to the point of the smell of water was bothering me & I was mentioning it to other people on the 27th March 2012. I don't know exactly when the headache started, whether it was before or after my heightened sense of smell, but I'd been feeling unwell for a while & made an appointment to see my gp at least a week before the appt. on 5th April. Top of my list of symptoms was the pain behind my left eye, I'd thought it was an eye infection as it felt hot & swollen in the socket. But as it didn't go away with eye drops & I was having other symptoms, I went to see the doc - I was thinking it could be a return to thyroid problems, as I'd had Graves disease related eye problems in the past & it felt like the pressure pain but only in one eye & without the dry, gravelly sensation. Blood tests were arranged to check my thyroid levels.