re sinus vs migraine was re sinus endoscopy i noticed several years ago that when i took analgesics fairly regularly motrin at the time i seemed to get a lot of migraines but had forgotten about that until i started reading some of the posts here i generally don t take nsaids or tylenol for headaches because i ve found them to be ineffective however i have two other pain sources that force me to take nsaids currently naprosyn first is some pelvic pain that i get at the beginning of my period and then much worse at midcycle i have had surgery for endometriosis in the past years ago so the drs tell me that my pain is probably due to the endometriosis coming back i ve tried synarel it reduced the pain while i took it mos but the pain returned immediately after i stopped three doctors have suggested hysterectomy as the only real solution to my problem although i don t expect to have any more children i don t like the idea of having my uterus and one remaining ovary removed the first ovary was removed when i had the surgery for endometriosis one of the drs that suggested i get a hysterectomy is an expert in laser surgery but perhaps thinks that type of procedure is only worthwhile on women who still plan to have children so basically all i m left with is toughing out the pain this would be impossible without naprosyn or something similar but not aspirin that doesn t work and motrin gave me horrible gastritis a few years ago so i m through with it in fact naprosyn works very well at eliminating the pain if i take it regularly as i did when i had severe back pain and pain in both legs as i ll discuss in a moment generally though i wait until i have the pain before i take the naprosyn but then it takes several hours for it reduce the pain it s actually quite effective at reducing the pain it just takes quite a while in the meantime i m frequently in severe pain the other pain source i have is chronic lower back pain resulting in bilateral radiculopathy i ve had mris xrays ct scan and emgs i ve had of them and don t intend to ever do that again with nerve conduction tests the tests have not been conclusive as to what is causing my back and leg pain the mri reports both say i have several bulging degeneratig disks and from the xrays and mri i think it is apparent that i have arthritis the reading on the ct scan was that there are two herniations l l and l l but others hav looked at the films and concluded that there are no herniations the second emg and nerve conduction studies shows significant denervation compared to the first emg oh yeah i had some other horrible test called something like somatic evoked response which showed that the internal nerves are working fine anyway the bottom line is that i sometimes have severe pain in both legs and back pain the back pain is there all the time but i can live with it when the leg pain is there i need some analgesic anti inflammatory medication to reduce the pain to a level where i can work so i took naprosyn regulary for months every time i tried to stop the leg pain got worse so i d always resume since last november i have taken it much less frequently and primarily for the pelvic pain i have been going to physical therapy for the last months times a week after the first month or so my therapist put me on pelvic traction she had tried it earlier but it had caused a lot of pain in my back this time she tried it at a lower weight after a month or two the pain in my legs began going away but the traction aways caused discomfort in my lower back which could be reduced with ultrasound and massage so now i don t have nearly as much pain in my legs in fact my therapist took me off traction about weeks ago getting back to my original reason for this post even if i can avoid taking analgesic for headaches i really can t avoid them entirely because i have other pain sources that force me to use them oh i forgot to mention that it has been suggested to me that i have back surgery but i m avoiding that too i find the migraines difficult to deal with occassionally i have to take off work but usually i can work but at a reduced capacity i m a systems engineer and do a lot of reading and writing when the pelvic pain is bad i can t concentrate much i usually end up jumping out of my chair every few minutes because the pain is so bothersome when the pain in my back is bad it can cause severe burning in both legs shooting pains in my legs electric shock type of pain in my feet and toes and basically when it gets bad i can t really sit at all then i end up spending most of my time home and in bed so even if the analgesics contribute to the migraines the migraines are more tolerable than the other pain sources i get a lot of migraines an average of to a month which last days i ve taken cafergot the first time the caffiene really got to me so i reduced the dosage but i don t like the side effects if i take more than two i get diahrea if i get a very bad headache i will eventually take the cafergot my neurologist wasn t very helpful when i told him my problems with cafergot he said that when sumatriptan becomes available i should try that i ve tried several other medications fiornal midrin fiornal with codeine tegretol and inderal but they either didn t work or i couldn t tolerate them so what can i do my doctor s seem to be satisfied with me just trying to tolerate the pain which i agree with most of the time but not when i have a lot of pain i ve had some bad experiences with surgery my heart stopped once from the anesthesia i was told that it was likely the succinylcholine and i ve already had surgery several times anyway the point of what i m saying is that even if analgesics can contribute to migraines some people need to take them to tolerate other pain janice rathmann
