Your employer and
family need to take you and your headaches seriously because
a lot of us have headaches and there is a large impact
on your life.
Click here for a description of
the impact of headaches on your life and print it out for people who have a problem understanding
it.
Ironically, more than 90% of headache patients will
respond well to a coordinated headache treatment program
and regain control of their lives, if they are taken
seriously.
That's right, don't go meekly into the night with a
splitting headache. You need to make people understand
that we experience more than the "two Tylenol and
see ya later" type headaches.
When you are suffering from headaches, you are the one
that feels the pain and you are the one who is missing
time from your life, losing wages, etc. That is why you
must be your own advocate to get things under control.
Several important points need to be made here:
It is not acceptable to meekly
accept the fate of a frequent headache sufferer. It is
your duty to yourself to be sure that your physician
really understands the true impact of these headaches
on your life. A large proportion of patients with uncontrolled
headaches have not actually expressed how much the headaches
were affecting their lives.
Once you have established this issue
with your physician, there needs to be a plan of action.
Most headache disorders can be treated by a caring primary
care physician. You must have a plan in place that includes
a way to evaluate for other conditions and a plan to prevent the
headaches if they are occurring too frequently. There
must be a rescue medication available to you when a headache
gets out of control. Do not fall into a pattern of frequent
use of pain medications. Actually, most headache patients
in good control do not use pain medications.
If the plan with your primary physician
is not working in a month or two, there needs to be a
next step. This may take the form of a referral to a
neurologist who works with headaches. It is not fair
for a patient to be kept indefinitely on an unsuccessful
program without specialty input. It is a particularly
bad idea to be on pain medications more often than once
or twice per week on a regular basis since some of these
medications can actually cause headaches.
