Dealing With Headaches

This might seem like a no-brainer to most of you, but I sure forgot how powerful a strong odor is on the head pain factory. Yesterday was the usual rite of spring for me — having to give my dog a bath because she rolled in fox poo. Ah, spring — when a young dog’s fancy turns to fox poo. And in case you haven’t been exposed to the joys of fox poo, let me tell you about it.

It smells like skunk.

However, unlike skunk, fox stink can be easily cleaned off a dog with water and puppy shampoo. And boy, did I get a headache — and not just because my sixty pound dog hates baths. The smell triggered a headache (just aheadache — not one of my migraines, thankfully).

Fragrance Overload

It’s not just ANY strong smell that can trigger a headache (very few people get headaches at bakeries) but really overwheming, knock-you-sideways smells. These can include:

• tobacco smoke (certain brands of cigarettes more than others, depending on your nose)
• fresh paint
• perfume or cologne
• pesticides
• nail polish remover
• turpentine or other paint thinners
• certain aromatherapy oils (depending on your nose’s preference)
• moth balls
• automotive fluids, even gasoline
• bleach and other eye-watering cleaners
• fox poop

The Good News

Although some of these smells are not avoidable, you do have the advantage of knowing that the pain will end as soon as you remove yourself from the source of the odor. If you do know in advance that a certain strong smell can trigger an annoying headache, then you can take medication beforehand. It’s not entirely certain why the some smells trigger headaches more than others in individuals, it most likely has to do with the smell causing the body to tense up.

When you are painting, (whether artistically or for home improvement) you need to be sure your working area is well ventilated, which helps cut down on the smells a bit.

And try your best not to let your dog roll in fox poop.

I bear the scars of many injuries from my years at Kmart, most of them emotional. Most people have nightmares about monsters and gruesome deaths — I have nightmares about Kmart. I also have a physical injury that also didn’t left a scar but quite a lot of pain.

About fiteen or sixteen years ago, I as working two retail jobs in order to make rent and my student loan payments. One of those two jobs was (as you’ve probably guessed) at the Sporting Goods department at the local Kmart. I was exhausted and business was slow. When I could, I slipped upstairs to the stock room for a nap. (We had piles of sleping bags back then.

And idiot me managed strike the back of my head against a steel shelf.

Sometimes months go by in between reminders, but every now and then the pain in the back of my head flares to remind my of my own stupidity — and to never work at a Kmart again, even if it means certain death.

What I Should Have Done

Because I was sleeping on the job (literally), I never reported my injury. (Back in my youth, I wasn’t nearly as good a liar as I am today. “Rena, how’d you manage to strike the back of your head against a steel shelf?” “Um, getting up from my knees thanking God that I was able to get a job at Kmart.” Naaah — I don’t think it would’ve worked, either.)

However, I was young and stupid. If you get your head clonked at work REPORT IT IMMEDIATELY. And then, depending on how bad you feel, get your superivor or human resources person to call an ambulance. In the meantime, treat as a concussion.

Sometimes, it takes time for the symptoms of a head injury to develop. Fortunately for me, my future painful flare-ups in the back of my back could be managed with over the counter medication.

When you do get a minor head injury like a blow to the back of your head with a Kmart steel shelf, let someone you trust know about your injury. At the time, my then boyfriend was able to keep an eye on me. Signs that you don’t just have a minor blow to the head inlude still having the head pains after six weeks, your symptoms get worse a few days later, you have trouble talking or are more easily confused than usual.

Ice bags and cold packs are great ways to help turn down the pain into a dull roar. If over the counter medication isn’t helping, than that’s another sign that’s it’s time to go see a doctor. Don’t self-medicate with alcohol, because that leads to other health care risks. Also, if you get drunk, you could fall and hit your head again. Your employer definately won’t cover that, especially not Kmart.

I was glancing at my Mom’s Star magazine (not that I would buy one, of course) and noticed that Tom Cruise’s wife Katie Holmes got the cover story for collapsing somewhere with a migraine. Apperantly, she is “cracking under the strain of life with Tom Cruise”.

Which got me to thinking — could Tom Cruise be the embodied spirit of migraine disease?

Hear Me Out

In some ancient beliefs, various sicknesses and pains were caused by spirits of the disease that randomly attacked when they felt like it (It’s a spirit thing — we’re not meant to understand). These spirits had to be appeased, exorcised or somehow dealt with before the patient could get better. Shamans often had to go into the spirit world in order to interceded with these spirits.

Maybe one day one got tired of living in the spirit world and decided to manifest itself in the fleash in order to better spread his powers and keep away from meddling shamans?

Tom Crusie was born in 1962. His first movie appearence was in 1981, with his first leading role in Risky Business (1983). From 1979 - 1990, there have been a rise of migraine diagnosed patients of a whopping 56%, with two thirds of them being women, especially between the ages of 10 - 49 (the ages most suspecbtable to the disturbing influence of Tom Cruise).

Rosie O’Donnell is a longtime fan, and she has a lot of health problems including depression (at least).

And science does not know the exact cause of migraine.

All a coincidence? I think not.

So, all of this time we’re doing clinical studies with chemicals and MRI scans and herbs and guided meditations and what we really should do is get rid of Tom Cruise.

And if that doesn’t work to cure migraines once and for all, no big loss.

Back to some real news and advice on dealing with headaches tomorrow — same headache time, same headache station.

Whenever I get a migraine or severe headache (I get several kinds — lucky me), I always try to remind myself that I could have it a lot worse. And here is one of those stories to remind all of us with migraines and chronic headaches that we could have it much worse, too.

So, what’s worse than migraines or cluster headaches?

How about going onto an Internet forum to find advice and solidarity from fellow sufferers and then have it hacked into by sadists who suddenly flash animated gifs at you to trigger migraines and eplieptic seizures?

Yipperdoodle, that might do it.

A lot of epileptics also have migraines, which is one reason I’m venting about this here. About 3% of epileptics can have migraines and severe seizures (even grand mal seizures) triggered by flashing lights.

I Wish I Was Making This Up

I found this story (appropriately entitled “Pure Concentrated Evil”) from Topix, which in turn found it from the blog Scribal Terror, who in turn found it from Wired, who got it from God, I guess. Or perhaps the Epilepsy Foundation, which ran the forum.

It is currently thought that the hackers were members of Anonymous, but that’s just a theory and nothing’s been proven yet. The Wired article went on to report this:

Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology. The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim they found a message board thread — since deleted — planning the attack at 7chan.org, a group stronghold.

But you know how the Web is — we’ll probably never find out who did it and even if we did, we might not have enough evidence to prove it.

But Whoever It Turns Out To Be

There was no reason for the attack or to target eplieptics. It sounds as if, perhaps, somebody needs a part time job? Hanging’s too good for them. We should hang them, bury them, then unbury them and shoot them. And then pee on them, for good measure.

On that happy mental picture, have a pain free weekend.

It’s so experimental, it doesn’t have an official name yet. The company’s name is Neuralieve. I propose “Magnetic Doo-Hickey” as a name for their experimental device. It’s catchy, it’s descriptive and it’s hard to forget. Anyway, enough with the name-quibbling. What the heck is it?

It’s a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation device. What does that mean? Basically, it’s a magnetic doo-hickey to help prevent migraines when you get an aura.

Now, the Details

Magnetic therapy for migraines and other afflictions like arthritis isn’t anything new. Pulse magnetic therapy basically sends electromagnetic waves over the area that’s hurting. Some people swear by it — others swear at it. The experimental device is strapped onto your head to send short bursts of magnetic energy through your skull and hopefully into your brain to soothe away the immanent pain to come.

It’s placed on the back of the head because that is where doctors think migraines start, based upon MRI scans of migraineurs with attacks in progress.

This is to be used only for migraine with auras (also known as classic migraines). So far, there’s no mention of trying to use it during the onset of a migraine attack.

Where Can I Get One?

It’s still in the clinical trial stage, so if all goes well, it’ll come on the market in about five years. If you are curious trying one out, your could look into participating in one of the many clinical trials currently being held.

Personally, I know it wouldn’t work for me because I become very clumsy when I get a migraine — (with or without auras). I’d wind up knowcking myself unconsious with the thing.

Hmmm — there’s a thought — we should have an experiemental device that knocks us out when we are about to get a migraine and then wakes up up 13 hours later.

I haven’t been having a good week, head-wise. I’ve lost track of whether I have had a series of migraines or one long migraine that just has been waxing and waning like the moon. I’m even having migraine pain in my dreams. Sleep used to be a haven for my head pains, but not anymore, I guess.

Nightmares

When I was a little kid, I’d have nightmares about aliens ripping me from limb to limb, being trapped in a driverless car that’s heading for a cliff or being chased by the Wolfman.

Man, I miss those days (or nights, as the case was).

Now I have blood-chilling nightmares about the years I worked at Kmart. Oh my God, they could make Stephen King look like Mother Goose. The nightmares are always set in December, of course, and there are a million customers and I’m the only employee in the entire store.

On top of that, I now dream that I have a migraine when in this retail hell and cannot get out of the store to go home and take care of the pain.

Man, I’m breaking out into goosebumps even now.

Am I the Only One?

I can’t be the only one who dreams they have migraines or chronic headaches, can I?

No, I’m not. Physical pain of many kinds can be experienced in dreams, whether you wake up still having the pain or not. Many times people dream of getting pain and wake up to discover something is indeed physically wrong with them. For example, one time when I was a pre-teen, I dreamt I got shot in the belly and was dying. When I woke up, I discovered I was having the worst gas attack of my life.

There are many anectodal accounts of people dreaming about having a migraine to discover that either they are experienceing a migraine in the waking world — or that they get an attack that day.

If you dream of having a migraine, perhaps that could be a warning of an immenent attack and that you should take preventative medicine (note the emphasis on perhaps). Migraineurs are often thought to have a lot of nightmares, although the nightmares don;t necessarily have to do with migraines.

There was a small study on nightmares as predicting a migraine attack back in 1996. This was published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics vol 65, number 4. This only interviews 37 migraineurs, so no earht shattering conclusions could be reached.

Yet another thing to keep track of in your headache journal – do you ususally have nightmares right before a migraine attack? Can’t hurt to keep track of it.

Hope this helps. Sweet dreams.

Back on February 28, I did a wee little blogpost about the results of an Italian study on Topamax (topimirate). It suggested that there can be mild impairment of your cognitive funtions if you go on the popular medicine to abort migraines. In other words, your memory and speaking abilities get a bit funky. The summary of the study suggested that these problems were an annoyance, but eventually resolved itself.

Apparantly, somebody disagrees.

(Which is OK by me, because that gives me topics to write about for this blog, so thanks, Ms Anonymous.)

Good Morning, Rena

This morning, I got quite an e-mail from someone who appently has a large ax to grind against Topamax. I’ve never taken the stuff, nor do I know anyone who has (except for a few fine comenters to this blog who report they are happy with it). As today is April 1, I thought the email might be a joke. But I’m not that lucky.

There might be something to this. Anyway, this was my favorite bit:

The Reuters reporter has confused and conflated the
topiramate patients’ self-reported language disturbances such as forgotten
words, which were recorded before any testing was done, with the quantifiable
results of the neuropsychological tests conducted thereafter. As a result, she
or he has vastly under-reported the proportion of patients who experienced
language disturbances as measured by the tests.

I have two college degrees (in Liberal Arts and Englsish) and I had to look up “conflated”. Guess what word I couldn’t find in my Funk & Wagnall’s? (Yes — I keep an actual print dictionary next to the computer, which probably explains my spelling).

But Seriously

Although I kid a bit on the writing technicalities of the two screen length email I recieved, I did get a link to a 2005 study about Topamax and people’s abilities to concetrate or not. I actually received two links to studies, but one link was broken, so we’ll just go with this.

In this study, 40 human guinea pigs were given Topamax, gabapentin or a placebo. They all had their IQs taken before and after. This was the most interesting pair of sentences:

More than half of topiramate recipients had significant decrements (>2 standard deviations) on tests of graphomotor skills, memory, and verbal fluency. On a test that correlates with full-scale IQ, median scores in the topiramate group decreased from 113 to 93.

What’s The Point?

The point is that someone reads my blog and cared enough to write a honkin’ big email about it to me and my boss here at 451 Press.

Oh, uh, no I guess that’s not really the point…

Actually, I’ve had a bad headache all darn day and trying to draw conclusions from random clinical trials is beyond my ken tonight. I’d like to know what all of you who take topimirate think (or not think, as the case may be). Who would know best — a few scientists or you? I vote you.