How my Head Gnomes attack

I know everyone's pain is different. If you are reading this because you are someone looking into ONSTIM, I thought it might help to explain my headache for comparison purposes. Or if you know me and are just curious.

My headache condition is unremitting Hemicrania Continua.
It is constant. My baseline of pain is a 3 or 4 on the 1-10 scale with exacerbation periods ranging from 6-10. My pain is on the right side of my head with the very rare left side referred pain. It shifts between the Occipital area on the back of my head to the supraorbital area above my eye with the most common manifestation being in the auriculotemporal area near my ear/temple. It is difficult to describe the pain. I guess the easiest would be with words like achy, tight, diffused, pressing, and occasionally burning.

In addition to the base headache, I have intermittent jabbing, stabbing, poking pain which is common with HC. This pain is where the Head Gnomes with Pickaxes and Ice-picks analogy originated.

My headache is a 10 the moment I wake. It takes anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours for it to slowly subside to its usual 4. My right eyelid droops and that eye sometimes feels like there is sand in it and is often sealed shut when I wake due to the eye watering associated with HC. (We like to say my right eye is sad.) I also get nasal congestion on the affected side at times when the headache is worse. Having a daily headache has caused neck issues, and often the pain in my head can travel from the worst point, down my neck, and into my shoulder blade.

A Bad Day

(I'm going to try to focus more on the headache itself and not the related cognitive difficulties is causes)

Things that make my headache worse include being overheated, (summers are worse for me) being tired, (which is easy to do considering the headache has caused horrible insomnia and an inability to sleep well from the pain itself), any physical activities from getting groceries to yoga (which has caused quite a lot of weight gain due to the sedentary lifestyle chronic pain causes), stress and anxiety, sound and lighting conditions can but rarely affect the severity of my headache. Doing too much of anything in a day, week, etc...is the biggest factor in my pain level. I have seen this explained in books and websites using analogies of allotted items such as "energy marbles" you have for a specific day...you only have a finite number and each activity you do reduces that number and your recovery or payback for using them is determined by how many you have left. Other times, the pain is more severe for no apparent reason and can stay that way for days... Basically, I have bad days, and better days, and I try my best to keep the bad days to a minimum by controlling what I can.