Question: I'm 54 years old, male. Beginning yesterday (08/31) when I went to bed, I laid down and started feeling relatively sharp pains at the back side of my head on the lower right side, basically between the right ear and the middle of the neck, indicating a type of headache. The problem is definitely affecting the brain, not the skull or scalp. The pains were periodic, but not predictable, generally taking place about once per minute or two, with the duration of pain being a half-second or less. At the precise moment when the pain occurs, it tends to jolt my consciousness a bit, even causing my neck to twinge slightly as a reflex action. Also for that instant of pain, but not lasting any longer than that instant, it will cause me to feel somewhat disoriented. Sometimes the pain has been worse than other times. In general, I would access the level of pain as a 7 out of 10, but only because of its brevity; and if the pain were constant, it would definitely be a 10 and very much unmanageable in that case. Aspirin didn't work to curb the episodes, so I took some acetaminophen, and I did go to sleep. When I woke up today, there was no pain for the first three hours or so of being awake, but then it came back; and now it is back with a vengeance. As I sit here typing this, the pains are coming at a rate of about 5 to 10 a minute. Earlier in the day, when the occurrences were only about half as bad as they are right now, I took about twice the recommended dosage of ibuprofen; and after about one hour, there was significant relief of about 95% of the pain episodes, indicating that the ibuprofen was working. Probably the acetaminophen also worked yesterday evening, of which I took only the recommended dosage of that at the time. Oddly enough, I will often feel the pain when I "swallow." I can also feel pain momentarily when I tap my finger relatively lightly on the skull at the localized area of the pain. However, strangely enough, after initially feeling the pain when tapping the skull, I can continue to tap it in the same place and no longer feel the pain for 15 seconds or so until I were to tap it again. The fact of feeling this pain when I swallow, and also feeling it when I tap the skull, and equally including where the ibuprofen and acetaminophen are working to stop the pain, clearly indicates to me anyway that there is swelling or inflammation in the area, possibly indicating a type of hemorrhaging. When it would come to any chance that there is actually internal bleeding taking place, all I can say is that I don't have the sense of feeling of anything "leaking" inside of my head. Going back a couple of weeks ago, I was actually feeling this same pain one evening for a brief period of time on that day; and I definitely did recognize it as NOT BEING a normal headache. I took some acetaminophen, it went away and didn't come back, and so I didn't think about it after that. More recently, or about 4 or 5 days ago, I had an unexplained stiff neck that lasted most of the day, but still no pain at that time in the noted part of my head. (I'm simply mentioning the stiff neck because I read where it can be a sign of an impending aneurysm.) THERE MAY BE AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS PAIN: When I was a child of about 5 years old, or possibly younger, I had an older brother (about 9 years older than I am) who used to abuse me physically. Nothing really, really bad, but he would periodically punch me in the stomach and knock the wind out of me. After regaining my breath, the ongoing routine would call for me to start forcing myself to "laugh out loud" as though it was all a joke, even though, of course, I didn't like being punched in the gut. The other thing I would do, and which I also did fairly frequently to amuse my brother and his friends, would be to run and "head butt" my head into walls with a good amount of force. Nobody was forcing me head butt my head into walls, but that is probably beside the point here anyway. Also, I was apparently butting my head into walls at an extremely early age when my skull and brain were still in a stage of relative infancy of development, thus being more prone to serious, lasting and even permanent injury to the brain. HOWEVER, my point here is that ALSO beginning about age five, I would periodically go to "ever so slightly" turn my head and neck TO THE LEFT, and I would experience this unbelievably EXCRUCIATING pain in the right side back of my head AT THE VERY SAME AREA where I am experiencing the current pain spasms. The pains back then were very much like feeling something was "catching" or "locking up" in my brain; and it would typically take me upwards of 2 to 3 minutes to fully recover from those episodes of pain. Interestingly enough, those excruciating pain episodes lasted until I was about 25 years old, and over the years up until then, they tended to diminish in frequency. My best guess is that I had approximately 150 to 200 of those excruciating episodes take place between age 5 and 25. While I do know that I have had a couple more since then, with one more or less minor episode (i.e., "minor" by comparison to past episodes when I was much younger) taking place probably only 2 or 3 years ago, I would say that I haven't had more than five (5) such episodes between age 25 and now. Perhaps obviously, what I am getting to here is that I tend to largely assume my current problem is directly related and proportional to those past problems, which I also tend to believe were made manifest by the fact that I was ramming my head into walls. The only thing I apparently don't know is to explain exactly what is wrong with my brain, but I have this feeling right now that it may not be a very good prognosis. Assuming that it's directly related to my distant past as a child butting my head into walls, I also expect that this would mean it is something that will never really heal itself. (I was, of course, elated years ago when I did in fact take notice of the reversal of those extreme cases of pain; and in that case, I was also of the mind to believe that the problem did indeed correct itself. But now I see where I was most likely wrong about that correction.) I am drinking alcohol right now. After my first 22-ounce bottle of beer - and in the time that I've been writing this statement - the pain has subsided significantly again to a rate of only one episode ever minute or two. (There, I just felt another one!) Anyway, please accept my general apologies for the length of this diatribe, but I frankly don't have anything better to do right now. Just so you know, I do not have health insurance at this time; or if I did, then I would not be writing this statement and I would have already made plans to see a doctor. I certainly don't think this is something I can "afford" financially. Very honestly, if what is happening to me right at the moment is as bad I think it could be, and if it doesn't just get better pretty quickly, then I have already consigned myself to the XXXXXXX realization (all in less than 48 hours) that it not only could kill me, but that that it very well may kill me. The only reason I am really writing this statement is to see if anybody has a roughly good idea of what might be wrong with me. I guess I would just sort of like to know what I am possibly "dying from" sort of like a terminally ill cancer patient wants to know the answer to the same effective question. Now I guess I will go buy one more 22-ounce bottle of beer before I go to bed. Thank you.

Thank you for the answer. I suspect what you've said here makes sense. As far as tapping on my head was concerned, however, my sensation was that the pain was coming from "beneath" the skull, NOT at the area of the scalp. In any case, I had been on a regimen of using apple cider vinegar on a daily basis (2 tablespoons twice daily) for several weeks up until the time when the pains started occurring. Based only on a guess that the problem might have been related to the apple cider vinegar, I stopped using it; and I also read some testimonies on the Internet from other people who have experienced sudden headaches related to the use of apple cider vinegar. I continued using the pain-killing medications, which seemed to be 100% necessary in order to reasonably control the pain. The pain did increase (including more frequent intervals of pain) and then gradually decreased on a daily basis following the time when I first made the posting here to you, including where I was able to begin using less pain medication. It has been about two days now where there has been ZERO signs of any pain, and I am no longer taking any pain medications. Whether the symptoms were caused by the apple cider vinegar aggravating a decades-old injury, who knows? I guess the main thing is that I am not experiencing the pain at this point. At its worst, the pain was really more than simply "bothering," and it was to the point of being chronic and debilitating, at least in terms of being able to carry on a normal daily life routine. I was having some gastrointestinal problems in the form of esophagus constriction when eating, which the apple cider vinegar actually seemed to cure, but at the expense of the headaches, it would not be worth it to resume taking the apple cider vinegar again in the future. Do you have any knowledge of apple cider vinegar causing headaches, apart from what I've mentioned here?