Dealing With Headaches

If you’ve never had a migraine, it’s likely you’ll never truly appreciate just how painful and debilitating they can be. Headache patients often are asked to rate their pain on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being mild discomfort and 10 being the most intense pain you can imagine. For me at least, migraine is about a 12 — a couple orders of magnitude beyond anything you could imagine.

Here’s what it’s like:

Migraine is a primary neurological disorder involving the trigeminal nerve and muscles and blood vessels in the scalp. While the mechanism is not fully understood, experts believe serotonin levels in the brain play a key role. The most widely used medications for migraine prevention are intended to raise serotonin levels. Serotonin also has been linked to chronic depression and sleep disorders. Many chronic headache sufferers struggle with these conditions as well. I am one of them. I took a high dose of amitriptyline for several years that provided some relief from all of these conditions. The drug eventually quit working for me, which frequently happens.

Migraines vary in length, usually four to 72 hours, and frequency. Some people have one every few years. I have two to three a month. They usually last one to three days. Most people have “classic” symptoms. Nausea is common, as are hypersensitivity to sound or light. About 15 percent of migraine suffers experience aura, which includes a wide range of symptoms like seeing colored lights or numbness of the face that indicate a migraine is imminent.

There is no cure for migraine, but the majority of sufferers can be treated with varying degrees of success. About 10 percent of migraine sufferers do not respond to the most common treatments currently available.

migraine, serotonin, aura, amitriptyline

I’ve mentioned in both previous posts that doctors often don’t take headaches seriously when patients complain, and there’s a good reason for that. Just about everyone gets an occasional headache, usually related to an illness, stress or fatigue. In general, these headaches are easily treated with over-the-counter pain medications and aren’t considered serious.

But many doctors don’t understand the difference between secondary headache, those caused by other illnesses, and primary headache, which is a serious disorder all by itself.

Getting effective treatment for primary headache usually means finding a headache specialist. An exception to this would possibly be periodic migraine with a low frequency. Most general practitioners are now familiar with migraine and the most common medications used to treat it.

You should seek a headache specialist if:

• Headaches reduce your quality of life
  Are you missing a lot of work because of your headaches, or is your productivity significantly reduced? Are you less active socially than you used to be? Are you afraid to make future plans because you are afraid you will have to cancel because of a headache?
• Headaches have increased in frequency or severity
  Frequent, chronic headaches often can be helped by taking a daily maintenance medication. However, some of these medications have serious side effects and should be monitored closely.
• Your primary physician doesn’t take you seriously
  You need to find another doctor if your family physician is telling you things like: “Everyone gets headaches.” “You’re a woman, and it’s probably hormones causing it.” “It’s probably just stress causing it.”
• Memory, personality or cognitive abilities change
  Primary headaches disorders often are accompanied by symptoms like short-term memory loss and difficulty concentrating.
• Over-the-counter medicines don’t help
  Primary headache is a neurological disorder that experts believe is caused by chemical imbalances in brain. Analgesics don’t address this problem, but there are many medications that do.

primary headache, secondary headache, headache treatment

It can be really difficult to get a handle on just how serious your headaches are when you don’t have anything to compare them to … or your condition slowly worsens over a long period of time. Most people … even most doctors … will say, “But it’s just a headache.”

For a long time, I told myself the same thing. I must be lazy if I can’t even get out of bed. I would feel guilty for calling off work in the middle of a raging migraine.

A major hurdle in getting effective treatment for headaches is finding a doctor who will take you seriously. Most general practitioners have had no formal training related to chronic headaches. If your family doctor has picked up this expertise through experience, you are very fortunate. When my headaches started, my doctor was pretty much clueless. He misdiagnosed me, sent me to the wrong specialists who again misdiagnosed me and allowed my situation to get much worse before I found the proper treatment.

But research shows most doctors will work very hard to help headache patients if they know how their lives are affected by living with pain. To help with this, GlaxoSmithKline, a major pharmaceutical company and the maker of Imitrex, worked with experienced headache doctors and testing experts to develop the Headache Impact Test.

If you feel your headaches are having a negative impact on the quality of your life, take a few minutes to go through this brief survey. You will learn a lot about yourself and your headaches. If you’re like me, it may change your life.

Imitrex, GlaxoSmithKline, headache diagnosis

Thanks for stopping by to check out my new blog, Dealing With Headaches. I’d like to start out by telling you a little about myself and why I wanted to start this site.

The most difficult journey in my life began almost eight years ago. I had a great job working as news editor for a well-respected daily newspaper, one of the largest in my state. I had a new wife and step son. Life was pretty good.

Then it happened.

I got a really bad headache, and it never went away.

After nearly a decade, an army of doctors, dozens of medications and hundreds of hours of self-research, I still live with constant, severe headache pain. I could have avoided a lot of frustration in the beginning if there had been someone around to tell me where to go for help and where to find answers to my many questions. My family doctor proved to be worse than useless because he just didn’t know anything about my condition. I later learned that most medical schools don’t teach anything about chronic headaches. It took me almost two years to find a doctor who knew how to treat my condition. And when I finally found him, I learned my experience was fairly typical. Hopefully, I can help others find their way a bit faster than I did.

Most people aren’t much fun to be around when they have a bad headache. I’m no exception. My headaches have cost me my marriage, a home and a career I love. Every single day is a struggle just to cope the pain. And I do that one day at a time.

I’d like to share some of my experiences with other people like me. I hope you will find information here that will help you. I hope you will find comfort in knowing you’re not alone. And in time, I hope you will find a community that cares.

Whether you occasionally suffer from migraines or cluster headaches, or live in constant pain like some of us, you are welcome here. As are the healthcare professionals who provide treatment to us.

headache, headaches, migraine, migraines, tension-type