A short history of my headache

In June 2007, life was good. I was doing research on HIV testing in a busy, urban emergency room. I had a spot waiting for me at a medical school that I had never dreamed would accept me.

One night, I woke up with the worst headache of my life. Working in emergency medicine, I knew that The Worst Headache of Your Life meant something terrible was occurring in my brain. I went to the ER, got a CT scan and a spinal tap. Normal, normal. Diagnosis: migraine.

They started out as an occasional hassle, turned into a weekly problem, began to affect me academically. I got referred to a migraine specialist through the medical school. The best. He has knock-out mice who get migraines.

Started on Namenda for prevention. Imitrex for symptoms. Then Maxalt. Now Relpax. The Namenda helped for a while ... but now I get a migraine every day.

The medical school wants me to be evaluated to make sure I am physically able to continue my training. I am waiting for a phone call to set up this appointment. I wait.

I realize that I have not been suffering nearly as long or as badly as some of my fellow bloggers. I am lucky. I just wanted to orient you to my brain.

PS - I apologize, that wasn't as short as I wanted it to be. But I really had to get the mice in there.

Yet another migraine blog

The other day, after leaving the nth phone message with my neurologist's secretary, I thought, "maybe it would be therapeutic to start a migraine blog!" Well, many migraineurs have come to the same realization, as I found by Googling "migraine blog."

It was amazing ... a network of fellow migraine sufferers comparing notes from day to day: ginger ale or sparkling water? Flashing lights or tingling limbs? Ice pack or sleep mask? I couldn't stop reading. Even with a pounding head and queasy stomach, the more I read, the more sane I felt. I wasn't crazy. These happen to other people. They deal. We deal. I can deal.

Really the only reason that I feel that I can contribute to the migraine blogosphere is that I have a unique perspective on our disease. It is often a double-edged sword. For better or for worse, I am training to become a doctor, with an MD looming after my last name.

So I study neurology, praying that my Relpax kicks in as I am literally dissecting a brain. I read everything I can about headaches -- neurology textbooks, research, clinical trials. I desperately search for a cure, somewhere, hidden in the literature. Sometimes the knowledge helps. But more often it reminds me how little we know about that mysterious organ in the skull, and how many times medicine has failed us.

I must go toy with some widgets to make this blog more fun to play with. I am also trying to design a blog that would be the easiest for a migrainous reader to use. Please let me know if my blog is too sunny, too noisy, or smells weird.