Dealing With Headaches

A study from Drexel University doctors have come out claiming that those with PSTD (more commonly known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder — once known as “shell shock”) most likely get migraines. This is not really a surprise for migraineurs. After all, going through a migraine is a pretty traumatic experience in an of itself. Like most current medical studies, this one was done in respose to an earlier study.

What Is PTSD?

It needs to get back to being called “shell shock”, that’s what it means (as George Carlin pointed out years ago). Ever see a Mack truck come at you and just miss sending you to The Wild Blue Yonder? The response you feel after that is shell shock, or PTSD. There is some talk that shell shock is only what immediately happens after the scary event and PSTD are the long-term effects. For some of us, that’s pretty much the same thing. There’s probably a lot of doctors who’ll disagree with me and feel free to do so. I’m not a doctor. But I have been diagnosed as having major depression, migraines and PTSD.

After living my life, you’d have shell shock, too, as opposed to PTSD.

The practical upshot is that with both migraines and PSTD, legal acess to powerful prescription drugs is involved. Unlike many people with migraines, though, PSTD can lessen it’s grip on you over time, while the migraines tend to hang around.

To qualify migraineurs for this study as having PTSD, they had to have at least one traumatic event happen to them. This could include surviving a natural disater, seeing a friend get killed, or being forced to listen to Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” for the millionth time. People with chronic migraines had higher percentages of having shell shock or PTSD than people who only get migraines once in a while (called episodic migraines. Oh, how I wish to merely have episodic migraines. Oh, God, if You could do anything, just boot me from the chronic migraine list to the episodic migraine list.)

The study also notes that people with clinical or major depression are also more prone to getting chronic migraines.

Ooo, don’t you just wish you were me? Like me, you could have a happy Trinity living in your head — major depression, chronic migraines and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I’m not entirely sure that announcing the findings of this study was such a wise idea. We migraineurs are already depressed. Don’t give us even more misery to look forward to.