How do your headaches affect your life?
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
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