Klarinet Archive - Posting 000555.txt from 2000/10

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Migraine headaches
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 09:13:25 -0400

Gene Nibbelin wrote,
>I just talked with my daughter, Lisa, who, unfortunately has been a migraine
>sufferer for a number years. Lisa, a violinist, is a research "nut" who has
>researched migraines extensively. Briefly, her suggestion and comments are
>as follows:
[snip]
>
>2. Find a doctor or specialist who is knowledgeable concerning the latest
>migraine treatments.
[snip]

IMHO, that is excellent advice. I'm somewhat concerned to see others
advocating specific drugs, since illicit prescription medications available
on the Internet may tempt people to try self-diagnosis and medication.
Migraines aren't all alike. The people who get them aren't all alike.
Treatments that work well for one person can harm someone else. For
instance, one of the older treatments, with ergotamines, can cause strokes in
someone with hemiplegic migraines.

In 1995, very suddenly, I started having serial migraines, one right after
another, abnormal in that the "aura" would persist through the headache.
Some of these were hemiplegiac. Tests for brain tumors and so forth all
turned up negative except the inflammation index, which was skyrocketing,
even though I didn't seem to have any infection. A doctor diagnosed an
immune system disorder causing an atypical migraine syndrome, and put me on
anti-inflammatory drugs that helped enough to let me carry on about half a
life. Playing the clarinet or any other wind instrument with one of these
doozies was out of the question. Listening to loud, contrapuntal music, or
playing my bodhran drum, helped. Drumming and counterpoint let me get into a
light trance, where the pain was still there but I partially disassociated
from it.

I fended off a great deal of ignorant advice from Job's comforters stuck in
the Victorian myth that migraines are "all in your head" -- symptoms of
mental illness -- along with numerous offers of "cures", some of them
well-intentioned superstition, others probably outright fraud and quackery.
My best sources of real information were my doctor and the book _Migraine_,
by Oliver Sacks. Migraines have a variety of specific, physical causes, some
more treatable than others. I got lucky, because it turned out that I had a
mundane plumbing problem with a straightforward cure.

In 1998, I had what at first seemed like the mother of all migraines -- until
I nearly died of acute biliary pancreatitis. A gallstone had lodged in the
common duct and blocked it. I'd never had the slightest symptom of gall
bladder disease -- which is not known to cause migraines. Yet surgery to get
rid of the (by then gangrenous) gall bladder shut off the migraines instantly
and completely. I now suspect that the headaches were so overwhelming that
they masked the gall bladder attacks that set them off. After a total of 44
days in the hospital over a two-month period, I recovered completely and am
in good health now.

The medical profession has learned a lot about treating migraines. Better
medications have become available just in the last 10 years. Please do what
Lisa and Gene suggest and get help from a good doctor. If the doctor's
initial failure to diagnose this problem correctly had turned me away from
conventional medicine, and if I'd failed to go to the emergency room (where I
was ignored for 12 hours and had to just about croak off to get some
attention, but that's another story...), I'd be dead.

Lelia

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