Strange headaches
 

I have been having strange symptoms for a week. I am not even sure they are related to my post-concussion syndrome.

I woke up 7 days ago feeling nauseous as if I had eaten something wrong. Then I had a pretty busy and stressful day at work that day. I pushed through it and ignored my symptoms for a few hours. In the afternoon I started having a weird form of headaches. These are not the usual tension headaches that I am having frequently:
- the headaches come in "crises" that last for a few minutes and then stop
- the pain is localized right behind my forehead, and is very intense at its peak. It is as if I could feel my heart pulse against my forehead.
- I have shivers through the body and head.
- very nauseous, strongly feel like vomiting. This also goes away when the crisis stops.
- I did not notice any aggravation of my cognitive issues (no slurred speech, no confusion), I am feeling off and tired but this is not much worse than usual.

I don't think it is because of the over-exertion of that busy day, as these symptoms are quite new to me and rest does not seem to help. I have no clue what this is (could it be an infection? or a new symptom related to PSC?) and whether I should see a doctor or just try to ignore these symptoms as I usually do with my residual post-concussion issues. My doctor does not believe that PCS is a real thing and he already classified me as a hypochondriac (rightly or wrongly), so he would probably not be of much help in such a situation.

I am sorry if this description is unclear. If someone has any idea of what this could be/what I should do I would be very grateful. Thank you.

Vania,

Have you tried taking any headache meds for these? From my experience, they sound like they could be vasospasm headaches. This is where the blood vessels spasm and restrict blood flow. A headache med like aspirin or ibuprofen reduces pain and also thins the blood so it can flow through these constricted blood vessels.

As we all know, our trial and error efforts are often better than anything a doctor can do. Maybe it would be worth trying a low dose aspirin therapy.

I am on high dose aspirin for arthritis. It seems to reduce these for me.

Thank you very much, Mark. These vasospasm headaches seem to correspond very well to what I am experiencing.

I have been taking paracetamol without any success (while it generally works for me). I will follow your advice and tried aspirin instead. Thanks so much for your time and advice.

Paracetamol does not have any blood thinning function. Maybe the aspirin will help.

You can take both at the same time. My doctor told me to combine paracetamol and aspirin at full dose when I have a stubborn headache. It helps.