Posted by Don Pearson UK (195.92.67.35) on March 16, 2000 at 17:52:42:
I can understand doctors who don't diagnose CH. It may often be easy to diagnose when you think about it, but it is unusual, and they meet a lot of diseases.
What I find discraceful is the woeful treatment, lack of treatment and lack of sympathy many of you get when you have been diagnosed. Of course, they wouldn't listen to their patients who actually have it. God forbid. But do they even find out about it from the experts? No.
A marked contrast to the sympathy shown by those who do understand, such as Peter Goadsby and Timothy Steiner of Imperial College at CXH, my consultant. No consolation, I know, but Dr. Steiner is pretty humourless about the average doc's attitude. I would love to read a letter from him to anyone querying his treatment directions.
With thanks to Bob Johnson for the URL and for his other info., these quotes from Goadsby's ABC interview show that we do have some people working for us. Give or take on the number of headaches per day, weeks and years, he knows!
"The pain is intense, so intense that the Headache Society had to introduce a special Very Severe category just to account for cluster headache."
"It's worth saying that in the few women who have it, all the women I've looked after with cluster headache that have had it, have told me that one episode of cluster headache, one pain episode, is more painful than delivery of a child. So you should imagine a man having to deliver two children every day for six weeks on the trot, and then have it go away, but know that in a year or two it will come back and he'll be delivering another two children twice a day for six weeks."
LOL