My sister is in dental school and just said to me recently: "We learned at school that most people who get the headaches you get are middle aged men who are heavy drinkers."  I'll tell you--not much gets to me, but this does.  i told her--"That's a really harmful stereotype and I feel like it contributed to me being misdiagnosed for many years.  I started getting these headaches when I was 14."  And as she knows, i don't drink and certainly did not when I was 14.  She told me "well every condition has stereotypes".  I said like what?  She said "like lung cancer."  Then she said the person who instructed her class was a neurologist.  She seemed resistant to my trying to give her information.
Why do people stereotype so much around this condition?  Or is that changing?  I mean--I know my doctor does not--but he is a headache specialist and it took me many many years to find someone good like that.  It seems so stupid to me.  In 2012, people are still saying that about CH sufferers?!?

It just makes me so mad, because it doesn't fit with my life experience--I am not a doctor but the one person I helped recently and recommended they come here for info and I also gave them info was a young woman who my Mom knew through her work who was getting cluster headaches who had been diagnosed with CH but had incorrect information about oxygen flow.  How can this false information about CH still be being taught?  Unbelievable if you ask me.

Ignorance!

Ask them for a reference to a peer reviewed published paper that includes this "amazing" information.

Hey, it is frustrating. I once had a nurse argue with me that O2 cannot and does not come any higher than 4-6lpm. My E tank was sitting in the corner with a 25lpm regulator sitting on it, and when I offered to show it to her, and disabuse her of her false information, she declined preferring what she already believed. It's not a condition limited to CHs. Most people don't want to change their minds, or have new information, preferring instead to stick to what they "know." Blessings. lance