Friday morning, very early, it’s only 2.30 am and my husband gets out of bed. Like expected the cluster headache attack that was lingering all day the day before finally broke through. We start the same method like we did the day before and he starts drinking his water while he crawls away in a dark space where he’s alone and doesn’t hear or see anything.

After half an hour the pain starts to go away and when it finally does he crawls back into bed hoping he will finish the night without another attack. Luckily he does and when he wakes up he starts his water treatment. In the afternoon we’re expected in Ghent with the specialist. With the kids at my grandmothers this week I can go with him as I want to get as much information I can. We have to be there at 5pm and we leave at 3.30pm. He drinks his last glass of water right before we leave and when we arrive at the hospital it’s almost 5 so he has been without water for an hour and a half. He feels an attack starting so after we announced our-self, I bought him a bottle of water so he could start drinking it in the hopes his attack would end before it really starts. Luckily it does and we can go speak with the specialist without him being unable to speak or listen due to the attack.

And we get good news from the specialist, we can find a treatment that will work for my husband. I’ve never been so happy. He will start with Cortisone right away, starting out at a high dose, which slowly decreases while the long-term medication builds up. The long-term medication (Deseril) will be started low and needs to be build up over time. He also gets prescriptions for Imitrex injections that he can give himself.

When we left the hospital we searched immediately for a pharmacist which we found not too far from the hospital. They did have the cortisone but not the other medication. Oh well, we will start with that and we’ll buy the rest at our pharmacist tomorrow. While we drove home my husband takes his first dose. He feels good for the rest of the evening, the only two side effects he encounters are an upset stomach and that he doesn’t feel tired. Let’s see what the night will bring…