Posted by NickD (209.83.95.126) on April 01, 2000 at 09:36:21:
In Reply to: Round and square holes posted by August on March 31, 2000 at 19:49:45:
a good doctor would run a whole series of test, good physical, the cat scan or MRI, and outrule any other medical condition, a bad doctor would take one look at you and either send you to a counselor as to how to deal with the pain or write up a prescription for some psychotropic drug and send you on your way. An expert may have a trick, one I saw prescribed nose drops with follow to the letter, lay on a bed with head hanging over the end and put a full eyedropper full of nose drops in each nostril and lay there for 20 minutes, sure it broke a CH, but I had a severe rebound that resulted in a very long CH.
After all of this, even seeing a good doctor, there are only so many meds in the book, so what do you do after you tried all of them over a 30 year period and developed reactions to most of them? He/she is really not a bad doctor, it's a doctors job to treat and CH is an incurable condition. Then you reach scrapping the bottom of the barrel stage, an informed doctor may say, he read in a medical jounal that an over the counter diet pill has shown some relief, so you try that, a doctors hands are tied because the list of treatments for CH is short, most meds are short term, but CH's are not. A good doctor can only be informed of all the treatments and rule out any other condition, but the fact remains, there is nor cure for CH's and after you tried everything, you are pretty much on your own, I still believe that CH's are caused by some kind of trigger, learn your triggers and avoid them, much research is still needed. With my Crohn's son, meds only work for so long, then the knife comes, have a cousin my age on my ex-wifes side, everything from the throat down was removed in some 30 odd surgeries over the years, he is still productive with inlet and outlet bags for survival, with CH's, I don't think they can cut off parts of your head and expect you to survive.