Headaches and Migraines
Written by Julie Taylor
Headaches and Migraines
I never realized how awful headaches were. After my first TBI I was in a coma and in intensive care for months. But, miraculously, I never had a headache? I had no idea how incredibly lucky I was...
After my second TBI - which was a relatively minor car accident - I had killer migraines every day for over a year and my doctor tried unsuccessfully to stop them.
Acupuncture helped a little bit. I tried several other therapies and they didn't seem to touch them. Then I was recommended to go and see a massage therapist (Scott Larke) who has years of experience and trains - and treats - other therapists. He was quite amazing. For me, deep tissue massage and chiropractic worked miracles. I tried chiropractic alone and that didn't shake the headaches - although chiropractic eased my headaches and was a definite ‘partner' with massage therapy to cure them.
Together, the effect was so wonderful I can't even begin to tell you. Within about 3 or 4 weeks my headaches were just ordinary headaches and not constant. Within 6 weeks they were even less - just the odd real headache every few days for a couple of hours. Now I get one bad headache each week (on average) but, provided I maintain regular ‘top ups' of chiropractic and massage, these headaches do respond to acetaminophen and a walk and go within an hour or two.
Even now (about a year later) if I try and reduce my visits - which are expensive - to less than one each of massage and one chiropractic each week, then my headaches start to increase in duration and intensity.
Experiment and see what works best for you. Sadly these therapies are mostly private - I'm not sure if they are ‘free' therapies anywhere in the world? Serious and frequent headaches alone are more than enough to stop you in your tracks and prevent you from being able to work... And being private, relief costs money. Which you may not have. A very good friend of mine has tried every ‘strictly medical' treatment and drug and nothing, not even shock treatment or high doses of morphine, stop these headaches.
We need someone willing to advocate and lobby our various governments to make all of these therapies available in certain circumstances. Would you be able and willing to take this on? If so, please email me...
As for being able to forecast the weather by whether or not my head aches - Yup! According to my chiropractor that's very common. When the barometric pressure changes it exerts a different pressure on our skulls - which are super sensitive... If we already have ‘fragile' skulls because of head/brain injury we can forecast the weather!