Posted by Yuko on October 31, 1998 at 03:41:49:
In Reply to: Re: OH MY GOD!!!! - followup posted by Cassandra on October 31, 1998 at 01:44:55:
Well, I couldn't get this IDIOT doctor's email, so I wrote to the site manager and editorial manager of health colomns (I think those are their titles). Here is a copy of my email. Needless to say, they never wrote me back. I thought my email was very unprofessional, but I was WAY too upset to write a nice email.
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Dear JSOnline:
I have just read an article on your site by your colomnist Lawrence A. Howards, MD on Cluster Headaches at:
http://www.jsonline.com/alive/column/0917howards.stm. This doctor has NO idea what he is talking about, and you are providing false information to the world wide web. He doesn't have a clue what a "cycle" or an "episode" means. Treatment is as easy as taking Psuedophed? Antihistamine has failed to treat cluster headaches miserably. Women aren't supposed to get CH? What do you call we got? Why do we have to test Anticonvulsants, Antidepressants, Sumatriptan, Beta Blockers, Calcium Channel Antagonists, Corticosteroids, Methysergide, Dihydroergotamine, Oxygen, etc. etc., to find the "right" combination of preventive and abortive meds? If untreated, we get 1-8 attacks a day, EVERY DAY, for the duration of an EPISODE (4-8 weeks). Individual attacks last 30-90 minutes in most cases. Some of Cluster Headache sufferers have committed SUICIDE because of the intensity of the pain everyday, for some (20%) go chronic. The intensity of the pain is like having your tooth drilled to the bone with no anesthetics. Stress does influence, but CH cycles are usually deadly on schedule. Not an occasional thing after a stressful surgery.
Sorry, I know you didn't write this, but I had to vent it. We are desperate to find out the answers to this mysterious disorder. Its cause hasn't been discovered. It just upsets me to read something like this that takes CH so casually. Please forward this email to Dr. Howards and tell him to visit http://web2.airmail.net/skymastr/cluster/ or http://www.clusterheadaches.com to educate himself. There are a couple of very well written medical journals on this disorder as well. I sincerely hope Dr. Howards is not treating anybody with this disorder.