Dealing With Headaches

(Note: Today’s post is geared towards American readers. No offence is intended to any non-American readers.)

You lucky ducks near Carmel, Indiana! You might think you don’t have much, but you are just being humble. You now have a brand, spanking new medical center devoted to the treatment of headaches and migraines — the St. Vincent Headache Center. You don’t even need a doctor’s referral to get an appointment.

St. Vincent’s estimates that about 400,000 Hoosiers get chronic headaches or migraines, so they need a place to go to for help. In order to decrease the pain you might still have when you visit St Vincent’s, the complex has been designed with soft lighting and earth tones to help lessen pain and stress. The music is light classical, so no risk of wanting to puncture your own ear drums for hearing Justin Timberlakes’s “SexyBack” for the 50,000,000th time.

But I Don’t Live In Indiana

There are other headache centers in the United States, but they still are few and far inbetween. As I live in the greater Philadelphia area, I can’t help but tout Thomas Jefferson University’s Jefferson Headache Center in one of the most prestigious hospital/medical schools onthe East Coast. Although I’m proud it’s in the Philly area, I pray that I never need to go there, even though my family keeps telling me I should go.

There are also Headache Centers in many major cities, including Houston, Cleveland, Cincinatti (Although it’s gaered more for treating children’s headaches)and New York, the University of Iowa (which technically isn’t a city, excuse me) and yet another in New York.

The webpage of The American Headache Society features a medical professional search engine to help you find treatment. You can also write to them if they know of any headache specialists or neurologists in your area. You should also ask your regular doctor for a headache specialist in the area, too.

But at least there is one less headache in finding a headache specialist in Carmel, Indiana.

Although I try my darndest to get you the best and most pertinent information on headaches and migraines that I can, I can’t quite cover all of the bases. One of these is how to survive the December holiday season, whether you celebrate Christmas, Yule, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, the Festival of Lights or another mid-winter celebration that I just can’t remember at the moment. Headaches and migraines spare no belief system.

In addition to a gift idea and dealing with Christmas Muzac headache, you will learn all you need to know about getting through the holidays if you are prone to migraines or headaches with Surviving the Holidays: Headache & Migraine Blog Carnival, put together and hosted by Somebody Heal Me!’s Diana Lee.

Here’s the official write up of the carnival from Diana:

The holiday season can be a fun time of year filled with special events, family and friends and lots of great food. But it is also a minefield for headache and migraine sufferers.

Am I In There?

Yes, one of mine on motion sickness is in there, but there is also quite alot about:

• clumsiness with migraines by Migraine Chick
• gifts for under $20 and tips on holiday survival from My Migraine Connection
• lowering your expectations can also lower your pain over the holidays, according to Headache & Migraine News Blog
• And Much More!

What Is A Blog Carnival?

To tell you the honest truth, I don’t exactly know what a blog carnival is, even though I have an article in there. It’s sort of like a e-zine devoted to one topic, but instead of being filled with poems, and letters from the editor, it’s made up of previously published blog posts. There are no rides, I’ve discovered, and no cotton candy. Oh, well. I suppose they’ll try and work on that for the realease of the next generation of blogging software.

But the biggest advantage of a blog carnival (or blog expo, whatever you want to call it, fair’s fair) is that you get to find links to other writers who write about whatever it is you care about. Personally, I was pleasantly suprised to find Migraine Chick’s blog and hope you will enjoy it as much as I am.

January Headache & Migraine Blog Carnival

Diane Lee is brave enough to host these carnivals once a month now, and soon there will be a call for submissions for January’s blog carnival, devoted to starting the year off right (or left?) You don’t get any money from submitting your blog posts, but you do get a lot of publicity, which can certainly ease the headache of the average freelance writer.

Hope this helps. See you tomorrow.