Posted by DJ (198.247.6.143) on August 27, 1999 at 00:08:14:
So much hub-bub lately. People have stated their opinion. People have stated what they thought I wanted with this board. Well, here's what I think. First, you have to read my Disclaimer..
DISCLAIMER
This post is NOT intended to turn away ANYONE who suffers from chronic pain. This post is NOT intended to piss ANYONE off. This post is simply intended to state MY point of view about the direction of this website and what is intend for. If you are of the type that takes things printed on this website personally, you may want to stop reading here.
END DISCLAIMER
Let me say up-front exactly what it says on the first page of this site... "This site is devoted completely and exclusively to those that suffer from the Demon commonly referred to as Cluster Headaches!"
This site has been and will always be "devoted completely and exclusively to those that suffer from the Demon commonly referred to as Cluster Headaches!". I did not build www.headaches.com, www.facepain.com, www.migraines.com, or www.chronicpain.com. I stand behind the principle on which this site was built. CLUSTER HEADACHES!
With that being said......
It would be ridiculous for me to state that a certain group of people are not welcome on this site. We've learned that there are many, many types of headaches in this world. Each of them dibilitating, painfull, and horrible. NO ONE should have to endure chronic pain, no matter what name has been given to "it". I sincerely welcome ANY and ALL of you who suffer from headaches - of any kind.
This website was built to be a support group for those of us that suffer from cluster headaches. To be quite honest, it has turned out to be soooooo much more than that. It has turned out to be a support group for people with all ranges of headaches. WE (as a site) have taken in people who suffer from migraines, people who suffer from TMJ, people who suffer from CPH, people who suffer from tension headaches, and on and on. It's absolutely wonderful that people have been able to come to the site and maybe figure out what they have suffered from over the years after bouncing from doctor to doctor and finding no answers. That in itself was more than I ever expected would happen at clusterheadaches.com.
Do I want to turn away all of the people who suffer from other types of headaches now? NO. Do I want to turn away all of the people that don't know what type of headache they suffer from and come to this site to try and find out? NO.
But let me ask you this...
What good does it do the person who does not suffer from clusters to come to this site, read through a little bit of the information on the site and "self diagnose" themselves with clusters? What good does it do for someone who suffers from migraines, TMJ, CPH, tension h/a, etc. to come to this site, read some of the posts, self diagnose (or maybe their headaches have been mis-diagnosed by their doctor) themselves and then print out 50 pages from this site and demand to their doctor at their next appointment that they have cluster headaches??!!?? Does that do anyone any good? I personally don't think that it does.
I say let's do this. Let's welcome ANYONE and EVERYONE who suffers from headaches, initially. Let's put good information on the board, in the guestbook, in the archives, and on the link page. Let's "take in" those people who are searching for a reason for their pain and then point them in the right direction so they can deal with their pain correctly, and hopefully, be pain free someday. I think that is possible.
I built clusterheadaches.com just over a year ago because I was tired of feeling like I was the only sorry bastard in the world who suffered from this unbearable pain. I built clusterheadaches.com because when I went to any of the search engines and typed in "cluster headaches", all I found was links to migraine sites. I was absolutely sick of going to the Harvard site and sifting through a billion messages to find ONE post about cluster headaches. I was absolutely sick and tired of being grouped into the same category with migraines! Hence, clusterheadaches.com was born.
Cluster headache sufferers are an elite group of people. We suffer pain like no one else in the world. I don't state this to say that "my pain is worse than your pain", I'm simply stating a fact. I you are here simply because you have headaches and don't know where to go, please do some reasearch and try and find out why you are hurting. Take our advise, do some research (hopefully the link page on this site can help you), inform yourself, and find something that will work for you! Don't pretend you have cluster headaches because this site is "fun". It doesn't do any of us any good.
How do you know if you have cluster headaches?
There are some very good links on the Sincerely,
DJ
http://www.clusterheadaches.com
14 year suffer of the demon called CLUSTER HEADACHES