Dealing With Headaches

I’m currently reading a book entitled Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Although not a book devoted to pain management, he does give an original approach as to how you could deal with your pain.

Greet your pain and treat it with affection as you would a guest in your house. “If you embrace a minor pain with mindfullness, it will be transformed in a few minutes.” (p 30). In my case, the minor pain would be transformed into screaming agony, but I do see his point.

Anticipation and Panic

One of the things Buddhists talk about is mindfulness, which means living in the present moment instead of dwelling on the past or fearing the future. (I know there is a lot more to the concept of mindfullness than that, so to any Buddhists out there, please forgive me). It has long been known that meditation or at least being calm and relaxed can help your pain be less intense.

When you have chronic headaches or migraines, it’s not just the attacks that are fearsome. It’s the time between the attacks, when you are afraid when the next one is going to hit and how severe it’s going to be and how long will you be out of comission and will be able to pay the bills and OHMYGAWD! The fear starts small and then rolls on very quickly to a huge problem.

Being afraid of when the next attack hits puts you in a constant state of stress, which is not goog for healing or to maintain good health. So, your fear can make you more prone to having the very attack you fear. Not being in a constant state of dread can help you in managing your chronic headaches and migraines. It also makes life a lot more comfortable in between attacks.

What To Do

Thich Nhat Hanh gives some suggestions on how to greet your pain with mindfulness. He does not claim to be a doctor and still says you should see a doctor for pain. When you realize a headache or migraine is coming, still take your meds, but also welcome the visit of your pain and even the guest it brings along, Fear.

Say to it, “Hey, how are you? Take a load off. Some weather, huh?” or whatever you would say to a houseguest. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested, “Fear, my old friend, I recognize you.” He also says you should smile at your fear and pain, greeting them as clamly as you can. In this way, they won’t be such bullies.

I’m going to try this approach. It certainly won’t give me any bad side effects.

The song is by Beck. The director is enigmatically called “Megna”. The performers are marionettes. Beyond that, I really haven’t a clue as to what this video is all about. But there is a lot of flashes, bright colors and disorientating camera work, which can induce the feeling of nausea so often associated with motion sickness, migraines or chronic headaches. If you are feeling nauseous and someone asks you how you are doing and you’re too afraid to talk, lest you loose control, show them this video.

I suppose my age is showing, but I’m not entirely sure who Beck is. I do know that there is a beer in Europe called Beck’s. I also thought “Beck” was a girl’s name (short for “Rebecca”). I remember hearing the name flung about over the years, usually on BBC radio, but other than that, I’m a complete newbie to Beck. Apparently, whoever he is, he’s popular. Google lists 75,500,000 websites with Beck’s name on it. (In contrast, Google only lists three for “Megna”).

When you are in the grip of nausea, it sure does feel like someone else is pulling the strings of your body parts. Enjoy.

If there’s any profession guarenteed to give you migraines, it’s being a soldier. That, and being a professional boxer. However, a lot of America’s Army personnel do not seem to be getting an accurate diagnosis for dealing with their pain. This is the finding of not one, but two studies.

And you can’t get proper help unless you get a proper diagnosis. There have been many reports of soldiers getting the medical shaft when they return from duty, and this seems to be even more proof.

Study Details

Both studies came out in Headache, the appropriately named journal for the American Headache Society. (I guss it could also work as a title for a journal about jackhammers, too). Although the studies concentrated on soldiers who returned from Iraq, they also looked at other Army personnel.

Some of their findings include:

• Although 19% had been diagnosed with migraines, the study showed that 17% of soldiers who did have migraines but weren’t diagnosed with it did indeed have it.
• 76% of miliatry cadets surveyed had migraines but were not diagnosed by Army doctors as having migraines.
• 18% of Army officer trainees had migraines for over a year
• Migraines usually knocked a soldier out an average of 5.3 days a month. Ouch. Even I average only four migraine attacks a month.

When Attacks Begin

Although the studies did include Army recruits and those in training, the studies did come up with something interesting. Their findings showed that the migraines often began after coming back home and not during combat. This is probably due to what’s sometimes called “Friday night migraines.”

The body is working so hard and has to stay in the best possible physical shape it can in order to survive Iraq. It’s not until a tour of duty is over until the soldier begins to feel the migraines. It’s yet another reminder that life sucks.

Personally, I think the best way to treat our soldiers for migraine is to get them out of Iraq and back home, but then again, I’m not a doctor.

Today, I was reminded of the importance of eating regularly in the management of migraines. Yes, you still need to take the medication, see your doctor and get a decent amount of sleep, but you also need to eat at times your body is used to. This is harder to do when you’re broke from paying for medication and doctor bills, but if you can afford to eat at least twice a day (even just a slice of bread) then you may be able to help prevent migraine attacks.

Dog Fancy Sucks

I’ve only subscribed to Dog Fancy since June and noticed things were getting weirder and weirder. This morning, I cracked open my October 2008 issue and read a huge editorial denouncing animal rights groups, even animal rights groups working hard to shut down puppy mills, ban chaining dogs to trees for years on end and prosecute dog abusers.

Guess who’s a member of a few animal rights groups.

Now, I don’t mean to turn this post into a discussion of animal rights. Just take the words “animal rights” and insert your favorite cause there — gun rights, free speech rights, human rights, whatever. The point is, the Dog Fancy editorial got me very upset. I was so upset that I couldn’t eat. I decided to burn off the nerves by walking my dog, Pony.

When I came home is when I felt a migraine coming on.

Nausea Sucks

By that time, I could barely look at food, let alone shove it down my gob. But if you manage to get the first three bites down, it gets easier to eat. Your nausea may even subside just from the first couple of bites. If you can’t take pills on an empty stomach, than you need to first take a couple of bites of food (or at least a good swallow of milk) and THEN take your pills.

And then you can go cancel your subscription to Dog Fancy and send the money to the Humane Society of the United States or your favorite charity.

Oh, uh, I guess that last point doesn’t actually help manage migraine pain — although it certainly helped in my case.

Migraines, auras and epilepsy are often inspiration for visual artists, as in this YouTube slideshow clip pairing migraine-inspired art to REM’s Losing My Religion. Granted, not all migraine art is pretty to look at, but that’s art for you. Perhaps you have created such art.

And just how does migraines or epilepsy influence art? Jim Chambliss at Sparks of Creativity would love to know. He’s currently working on a PhD about just that, with (as he puts it) “in
association with the University of Melbourne and St. Vincent’s Health in
Australia.”

Where You Can help

Not only is Jim Chambliss working on a PhD in creative arts and medicine, but he’s also working on a book and an online exhibition about migraines and epilepsy’s influence on artists and their creations. And they are open to submissions. You can live anywhere to submit 8 to 10 pieces of art. Submissions close on September 30, 2008, so you better get your skates on. There is a $1000 and $500 prize up for grabs (in Oz dollars). Please check out Sparks of Creativity for further details.

Speaking from Experience

Jim Chambliss is an epilieptic and Australian artist (as well as a rather ambitions student) that uses his condition to help fuel his ceramic sculptures. His best known piece is called “Puzzled”, which has events of his life (including an EEG readout of his brainwaves) pasted on the squares of a turning Rubik’s Cube. The images are all mixed up. He says that this was how he felt after a particularly violent seizure:

“The side with my face is a representation of when I had a seizure in December 1998. I stiffened and fell flat on my face on a hardwood floor, but I have no memory of the event. Later my face and persona were not recognizable to me. I had a broken nose, chipped teeth, and one eye swollen closed.”

Chambliss has said in interviews that people with chronic conditions like migraines or epilepsy can’t describe in words what their lives are like to people who have never been through it. But they can describe how they feel through art.

My thanks to Jim Chambliss himself for sending an email about the study and the art competition.

This is a new headache type for me, so please forgive me if I get a few facts wrong. It’s only been out for a few years. As always, please do not use this blog in the place of your doctor’s diagnosis and advice. But apparently the new scourge to head as everywhere is Google headaches. At least, according to blogger Andy Beal/Al Scillanti of Marketing Pilgrim who had to try and deal with yet another update to Goodle AdWords.

Google Must Have a Lot of Free Time on Their Hands

While trying to manage his AdWords account, things got trying for our blogger Al. He finally gave up and wrote Dear Google, You’re Giving Me a Headache. At the end of the post is a plea for acetominophen for his Google headache. Being a brave soul, he also put his address on the blog (a practice I don’t recommend).

Google sent him the requested bottle of painkiller, but sent aspirin insted of acetominophen. Well, I guess they can’t get everything right.

Why Now?

The really interesting thing is that this cute little exchange happened in 2006 and it’s getting a lot of buzz now, especailly on news sites like Topix, partially due to a site called “idiggweed.com”. Perhaps it’s just one of those stories that refuses to die completely, but resurfaces one in a while like a gypsy mosth infestestation.

That and it can be really difficult at times thinking up ideas for blog posts, especially ones with Google-friendly titles, keywords and tags. Ocassionally, you start recycling the stories of others. If you’re partially depending on affiliate marketing, than you cross your fingers and pray to the Google Gods that the ads won’t completely obscure your blog post or that you actually make some money off of them this time around.

Don’t computers make our lives so much easier?

Back to the usual shennanigans tomorrow.

Behold: before there was Peter Gabriel to put words to wordless feelings, there was John Lennon (1940 - 80). It came to pass that one day John Lennon doth wrote a song called “Cold Turkey”, which went on about the pain and lamentations of heroin withdrawal.

And it was good.

But, Seriously

One of the reasons I like this song so much is that I can relate — sorta. I’ve never done heroin (not that I know of, anyway) but I have been accused of faking about how bad I feel when suffering from migraine pain. I’ve been accussed of faking so much that when I get a migraine, I automatically hear in my head, “You’re faking it.”

When I was homeless in England, I met a lot of drug users, some of which I sat right next to as they were “clucking” (going through withdrawal pains). If someone hadn’t told me that they were clucking, I never would have known. I knew something was wrong, as they were quiet and still and sometimes kept clenching their jaws and slightly rocking back and forth, but I wouldn’t have guessed that they were going through the agony of heroin withdrawal. It just doesn’t look that dramatic (and when it does, they usually try to not appear in public.)

Anyone who goes through pain and doesn’t get any sympathy for it can relate to “Cold Turkey.” Although I do not get cluster headaches, I imagine the pain is like the pain described in “Cold Turkey”. If someone wonders what migraine or cluster headache pain is like, play them this clip. This is from a 1972 benefit performance in New York City. Thanks goes out to “Corportate Tube” (whoever you are) for putting this up. Enjoy.

With the cost of everything skyrocketing and wages not rising to keep up, it’s no wonder that people are turning to the black market in order to get prescription drugs. There are many things you can learn to go without, but having to go without AND live in pain can be too much to ask for many folks with chronic pain conditions such as migraines and headaches.

The True Cost Of Medicine

Granted, the black market is not known for coupon days or super sales. It is generally more expensive to get anything through there than by legitamate means. However, prescription medicine is not just the cost of the drugs themselves. It’s also the cost of getting the prescription, whihc can often be more than the cost of the drugs themselves. This includes the doctor’s appointment, missing time off of work to kep the doctor’s appointment and all of the health insurance co-payments and premiums you need to shell out for so you can go to the doctor in the first place. You never need a prescription at the black market.

One fun thing about buying prescription drugs off of the street is that you don’t know what you are buying. It could be Prozac — it could be a sugar pill. Who knows? But many people are willing to take the chance. As with some tainted heparin cases prove, we tend to do the same thing with Big Pharma, anyway.

What About Drug Abusers?

Some people do take street prescription drugs for the highs (or lows) rather than for curing physical pain. Wired speculates that prescription drugs are cheaper and easier to get and just as powerful as heroin or coke. Teens abuse legal prescription drugs far more than illegal drugs.

What Can We Do?

I see three future possibilities:

1) Well, I guess it’s too much to hope for that the cost of health care would go down so that people wouldn’t think about using the black market in the first place. That would make too much sense.

2) The need to have prescriptions for medications get tossed. This would lower the cost of medication. This would also solve a lot of problems that go along with human overpopulation as well. This also would cause a sudden boom of jobs in the gravedigger or crematorium trade.

3) The governments sending everyone marijuana ice cream every week as opposed to making any health care reforms. At least, in this future, we have ice cream.

Off to take an Excedrin.

This post is an apology to you, Gentle Readers. It is over the spelling in this blog of the brand names for the migraine medication zolmitriptan. I’ve even seen two different spellings on the Zomig nasal spray sample box. I have seen on the web many spellings for Zomig and even though I know I typed z-o-m-i-g, I see Zolmig, with an “l” sneaking in. This has been going on for months, I confess. The proper spelling has only just been pointed out to me by my health insurance company (who wondered what medicine I was trying to get coverage for).

I’m Going Crazy

Perhaps I’m getting dyslexia in my old age. It’s a really selective dyslexia that only pops up when reading about triptans. Or perhaps it’s a form of dementia where, instead of seeing space aliens or Tom Cruise trying to get me, it’s a band of rogue “l”s.

From Now On

So, from now on in this blog, I’m going to just bite the bullet and type out the entire active ingredient name, zolmitriptan. I’m going back through this blog to try to make the necessary spelling corrections, but hey, I’m only human and you know I’m going to screw up the spelling of Zomig somewhere.

Again, my apologies for the confusion. I do try to spell the drug names correctly (usually by running the spelling through Drugs.com) but somehow I think the Spelling Gods are out to get me. This is the curse of anyone with a Bachelor’s in English (of which I am one). All of us make fun of spelling errors in others and yet can’t spell our way out of a wet paper bag. This is the deal we make with the Spelling Gods. We get the degree and then look like a bonehead for the rest of our lives.

Let’s assume you haven’t read any of the previous blog posts. Let’s also assume that suddenly you have headaches all of the time and were not born with having headaches all of the time. What do you do? Here’s the game plan to help you manage your chronic headaches.

Go To The Doctor

You can’t avoid this. A doctor has to actually put his or her hands and instruments on you and look at your medical history in order to try to at least attempt a diagnosis. There are hundreds of reasons why you have suddenly developed chronic headaches. Although the internet is amazing, it still can’t be used to diagnose your chronic headache. And, on that note, although I’m flattered at the thought that some of your Gentle Readers think I can diagnose you after getting one email from you, I can’t. I’m not even a doctor. I don’t even PLAY doctor.

Keep a Headche Journal

Before you go to your doctor’s appointment, write down what your headches are like so that the doctor can read them. It’s better to write this down instead of trying to remember it, because you won’t remember it, especially if you have to wait a really long time at the doctor’s office and are stressed.

Write down things such as:

• How long the headaches last
• What side or part of the head the pain is
• What the weather conditions are like
• Have you had any blows to the head in your life?
• Do your parents have chronic headaches or migraines?
• What time of day the heacheaches arrive
• Do you see any funny shapes or flashes before the pain starts?
• Do you have any other symptoms such as a stuffed up nose or nausea?

Learn All You Can About Headaches

Part of the misery of chronic pain is that it feels as if you are in the teeth of an invisible monster. The fear of wondering what is going on in your head can be just as bad as the actual pain. By learning what you can about chronic headaches and migraines, you can help take some of the bite from the pain, because you can get a handle on your fear.

Hope this helps.

It is with a certain amount of shock that I’ve discovered that I’ve been bloging at Dealing With Headches for over a year now. (”What?” the readers say, “It seems so much longer than that!”) Yes, indeedy. My first post here, Keep a Headache Journal was on August 6, 2007.

Hmmm — I missed my own anniversary. Well, I guess that happens when you’re busy blogging and recovering from migraines. (My last migraine attack was August 14. My eyes still get blurry.)

So, What Have We Learned This Past Year?

• Placebos do really well in clinical trials
• Never run with pencils
• WordPress spell check is crap
• Migraine pain is so bad that people will do just about anything to try and treat it
• It’s always important to go organic
• Having a chriping cricket loose in your bedroom sucks
• YouTube is fun
• The camera doesn’t love me, but sure loves my dog Pony.
• If you remember nothing else from this year about how to treat migraines and chronic headaches, for Pete’s sake, just remember to keep a headache journal.

A Final Thought

I hope you have enjoyed this year plus since I’ve become the blogger for Dealing With Headaches. And please keep in mind never to use this blog in the place of a doctor’s diagnosis and advice. Keep taking the medication and relax inknowing that everything bad that happens to your head is all the fault of Tom Cruise.

According to some leading doctors in the fields of sports medicine, tens of thousands of concussions may be misdiagnosed or not treated properly every year. The Medical College of Wisconsin estimates that there are 40,000 concussions that happen in high school sports every year. A huge conference in Pittsburgh, PA was held at the end of July entitled “New Developments in Sports-Related Concussion”. It was hosted by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Pittsburgh, home to the head-clanking Steelers and bone-slamming Penguins, knows quite a lot about sports-related concussions.

Apprently, there is a lot of arguments in the sports medicine arena as to how best to treat a concussion or suspected concussion. How soon should treatment start? Do they really need all of those tests? Should you let them sleep? Just what kind of long-term damage can concussions do?

Why Is This News Here?

But, you don’t have to play sports in order to get a concussion. I got one working at Macy’s, for example. I remember for a couple of hours after the blow that I thought I was fine, and suddenly I couldn’t figure out how to stand up by myself. I couldn’t stand up by myself for nearly a week. Thankfully, I let myself be talked into going into an ambulance so I could be properly diagnosed, stuck in scary, noisy machines that kind of look like they were straight out of Doctor Who and then tucked into bed for a few days.

Old injuries like concussions can often lead to really nasty headaches. And concussions, if not treated, can certainly lead to chronic problems with your head. The movers and shakers in the field of concussion treatment tend to be the sports medicine physicians, becuase they are often well-funded. What they discover about sports-related concussions can often translate to everyday folks getting everyday concussions — like idiot me walking right into a t-shirt display at Macy’s.

Do People With Concussions Ever Wake Up?

In case you are wondering, let someone with a concussion sleep. It’s the best thing for them and they will wake up again. Here’s my previous post on concussion first aid if you want to know the gory details.

Are you sick of the Olympics yet, or am I the only one? Technically, my body is the one that is sick and tired of the Olympics — my mind and my stomach is enjoying it just fine. There’s nothing like settling down with a couch full of junk food to watch the world’s greatest athletes in painted-on outfits bust their lack of guts. God bless America!

Whoa, Nellie

I refuse to have a Tivo. It wasn’t around when I wanted it as a kid and I will not forgive it trying to suck up to me now in my late 30’s. I stayed up for an entire fortnight back in 1984 to watch the Los Angeles Olympics and if I could do it then, I could certainly do it now.

However (and you knew a “however” was coming), trying to follow the sports I actually give a darn about has proven to be next to impossible. I decided to focus on the horse sports (equestrian events). The fun thing about Oylmpic coverage is that you never know when your event is going to come on. You are lucky when you know what DAY it’s going to come on, let alone what time.

Following the equestrian events has proven to be impossible, even when I did decide to stay up all night to try and finally glimpse the half hour of horseflesh at four in the morning, which means they only showed about ten horses of the actual sixty-odd that competed. I was so exhausted, I can’t even remeber what happened. I have to go to the newspaper for that.

Why Am I Banging On About This?

When you have migraines or chronic headaches, you can’t stay up all night watching television, even if it is the Olympics. In fact, you can’t stay up doing ANYTHING all night (insert your favorite all night activity here) because this will trigger a sleep deprevation migraine.

Part of managing your headache pain is accepting your limitations. You also can’t rely on being entirely well the next day. If you are going to do something stupid like watch the Olympics for nearly 24 hours straight when you’re in your late thirties, make sure you have nothing going on the next day and that you make no commitments to keep on this recovery day.

And, for God’s sakes, don’t watch beach volleyball.

Many posts ago, I talked a bit about biofeedback for tension-type headaches. It was difficult to find accurate information for that blog post. (Come to think of it, it was also hard to find innaccurate information on biofeedback for migraines, but I digress). This news story done by Washington, DC ABC affiliate WJLA gives a bit more information for those who could be interested in neurofeedback for migraines.

You do have to get past the stutters and stumbles at the very start of the clip, but once you’re past that, it’s all systems go. They show PacMan as helping you learn how to control your brainwave activity, but there are also other games available. However, you probably won’t get to choose what game you play when you go to a certified specialist.

The clip does go on to claim that “doctors report patients having as much as 90% improvement with neruofeedback”, but they didn’t name their sources. However, if you’ve ever been able to will yourself not to sneeze, cough or vomit, than you already know how powerful the mind can be in controlling some bodily functions once assumed to be involuntary.

If you are interested in neurofeedback or biofeedback for migraines or tension-type headaches, then you could ask your doctor for a recommendation or try checking the virtual Yellow Pages.

Well, despite promoting the August Headche Blog Carnival, I managed to once again forget actually submiting anything to it. (Smacks forehead with heel of hand). I guess some part of me expects Diana Lee (our Blog Carnival “hostest with the mostest”) to read by mind. Once again, Atomic City was to have been this month’s host and once again it wound up at the usual place, Somebdy Heal Me. Hopefully, everything’s okay with the blogger over at Atomic City.

(In case you haven’t heard of a blog carnival, it’s just a fancy term for a long list of blog posts or web page articles that are all somewhat based on one topic. In this case, it’s migraines and chronic headaches, obviously.)

This month’s topic was “How to deal with someone who just doesn’t “get” migraine disease”. Unfortunately, migraines do not have spectacular symptoms for someone watching you. If you break a leg and a bone is sticking out, you will automatically get a lot of sympathy. You don’t get any of that when you have chronic headaches or migraines.

Highlights

Although I urge you to read all of the selctions in a Headache Blog Carnival, there are some that strike me as being more urgent to read than others. This is just a selection based on my own bizarrre reading criteria. If I didn’t pick your article to highlight, it is no reflection on you as a writer.

• Let’s get the party started with How to Introduce a Migraine by James over at Headache and Migraine News Blog. Because, of course, it’s all about the migraine.
• We get down to basics with When People Don’t Get It About Disease over at No More Headaches. This is a holistic look at the frustration migraineurs often experience about nasty reactions from others.
• Now, let’s take it down a notch with Head Pain or Head Games: The Work Toward Understanding Pain (as in, communicating what level of pain you are at to a doctor or nurse). However, you might want to break out your magnifying glass before trying to read the post.
• And finally, let’s wind down with Meagan Oltman at Free My Brain From Migraine Pain with Handling Migraine Challenges: Helping Others Understand, where Megan says she’s the “Dear Abby of migraineurs”.

Well done, everyone. Now, let’s see if I can remember to actually something for next month’s carnival.