Free my Brain from Migraine Pain

Please Email Your Senator Today!

You Can make a Difference - Right Now!  We migraineurs spend too much of our time feeling helpless.  Part of taking back your life from this disease is to feel and be powerful wherever and whenever you can.  You can do a piece of that today.  If you are in the US, please email your senators right now!  We just got word this morning that today is the deadline to get senators on board to support increases in NIH funding for headache disorder and Migraine disease research.  Last month's efforts to get support in the House of Representatives were successful, so thanks to everyone who helped!  And now we get another chance!

Here's the text of the email I received from ADHA this morning.  You can click on the link below to email your senators in less than 5 minutes.  Thanks in advance for your support.  Together we can make a difference!

Dear Ms. Oltman: 

Our efforts last month to urge members of the US House of Representatives to support increases in NIH funding for research on headache disorders were highly successful. Twelve Representatives signed the Obey/Walsh letter. This is an outstanding result for the first mobilization of our numbers, and we are optimistic that it will be enough to have our message appended to the House appropriations bill.

It is now time to contact your US Senators for the same purpose. Unfortunately our window of opportunity is only narrowly open. The letter with Senators' signatures must be submitted by today, April 4th.

1. Please take just 5 minutes RIGHT NOW to go directly to http://capwiz.com/headacheadvocacy/issues/alert/?alertid=11231066&PROCESS=Take+Action  and send your message to your two US Senators
2. Please forward this email right away to anyone else concerned about the inadequate state of care for patients with headache disorders.

Only with increased research will new effective treatments for headache disorders become available. And only with your help will such research activities increase to levels appropriate to the huge scale of this problem. The larger our voice, the greater will be our impact.

Thanks again for your efforts.

Robert Shapiro, MD, PhD
William Young, MD,
Teri Robert, PhD
Brad Klein, MD, MBA

And thanks from me too! - Megan

Please support help for our heads!

Here is the text of a letter sent Tuesday of this week to all of us on the AHDA (Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy) mailing list.  The time is now to contact your congressperson and urge him/her to support more research funding for headache disorders.  The ADHA link below makes it very easy to do.  Please help NOW.

Dear AHDA advocates -

Well, the key moment has arrived for you to contact your Member of the US House of Representatives to take action for increasing NIH research for headache disorders.

A Dear Colleague letter was sent yesterday by Representatives Peter Welch and James Moran to all House offices, urging all Members of the House to co-sign a letter to Representatives David Obey and James Walsh. The Obey/Walsh letter requests inclusion of language that supports headache research to be appended to the FY09 appropriations bill for NIH. (For details, see the letter and attachments at the AHDA site.)

The more Representatives that co-sign the Obey/Walsh letter, the greater are the chances that the language will be included. The Obey/Walsh letter must be submitted with signatures by 3/19. This unfortunate deadline was a late-breaking surprise for us, so we have little more than a week to get as many signatures as possible. Please go to the AHDA website as soon as possible to contact your Representative and urge her/him to co-sign the Obey/Walsh letter now.

http://www.allianceforheadacheadvocacy.org/

Blessings upon your heads!
- Megan Oltman

Migraineurs - You are in famous company!

In the Chicago Sun-Times this morning, a list of presidential letters which will be auctioned by Sotheby's next month includes:

• • Thomas Jefferson reporting on his debilitating monthlong migraine headache and George Washington's failing health.

Sometimes it just helps me to remember that people have suffered from this disease throughout history - and some of them achieved amazing things nonetheless - and with none of the treatment options we have - still it couldn't have hurt to have lots of money, and slaves.  How much harder it must have been to be a working-class, or enslaved, migraineur.  (Hmm, maybe things aren't so different now after all.) 

- Megan Oltman

                                                         Jefferson Memorial photo courtesy of chadh

Boy, that's a Real Migraine!

a. Europe's $1.50 Headache Is Italy's Migraine(Headline in Forbes.com today, article by Vidya Ram – the article is about the rising euro and its effect on Italian exporters.)

b.  SOUTHERN AFRICA: Integration and the migrant migraine (Headline from IRIN, posted by Reuters today - the article is about how the flow of Zimbabwean migrants to neighboring countries is hindering the goal of Southern African regional integration.) 

c. Saturday - slept badly Friday night, migraine by afternoon, pain at level 3 on left, moderate nausea, picked up boys from movies, pain at level 8 on return, both sides now, extreme light sensitivity, took Imitrex 7 pm, lay down, room dark.  Can't read or look at computer screen.  Vomiting on & off 3 hours, pain varied from 8 to 5,  went to sleep around 10.  Pain at a 3 on waking, tired, achy, depressed all day.

Okay, are you ready?  Which one is the real migraine?  You picked c, right?  Good job!  You get a gold star.  a and b are known as frustrations, hassles, problems or perhaps international crises.  They are not migraines.

Am I being too much of a stickler here?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  There's a lot of real news about migraine in the news these days.  Partly thanks to the New York Times Migraine Blog, or maybe our chance for some recognition and understanding has finally come.  But most of us get annoyed by the trivialization of a very real and debilitating illness.

Interestingly, today the first 15 pages of results of a Google search on migraine are actually some kind of content about migraines. This was not so a few months ago, when I tried the same search and came up with many references like the two above, and one about a hockey team's poor performance being a “migraine” for the team manager.

I am willing to ascribe most of this to ignorance, not evil intention.  I think it's become a fashion to refer to a big hassle as a "migraine" instead of just a "headache."  However, it does distract public attention from the fact that this is a disease.  A fact that most people still don't know.

Is it okay to say "what a headache?"  If you've ever had a headache, you know what that means.  Most people have had a headache, and know that tension can lead to one.  So we call things that make us tense or upset "a headache."  People also say "I just about had a stroke!" or "I just about had a heart attack!" I've been guilty of that myself.  After a stroke hit someone very near and dear to me, I didn't feel like joking around about it any more.

This is in the category of being responsible for what comes out of our mouths.  We create our world through language.  We shape what is possible for ourselves and others.  You only have to listen to political double-speak to understand that.  Whoever gets to frame the issues tends to win the debate.

And so, maybe we can call a hassle a hassle and a crisis a crisis?  It seems like in our culture we always have to go one better, to make things more extreme.  If 10 years ago we called a hassle a headache, today we have to call it a migraine.  What will we call it 10 years from now?  A brain tumor?

- Megan Oltman
Somebody stop me before my head explodes!

                                                cave waterfall courtesy of subflux; brain courtesy of Gaetan Lee