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.

-Return to headache survival guide

© Edmund Messina MD 2002