Review: All in My Head (Headaches)

I picked up  All in My Head: An epic quest to cure an unrelenting, totally unreasonable, and only slightly enlightening headache, by Paula Kamen, because it sounded like it would be a fun, smart-girl treatment of something near and dear to my brain: headaches.  And it is.  It's a cleverly written, funny and wry look at Kamen's ongoing struggle with Chronic Daily Headache (CDH) which zapped her, out of the blue, at the age of 24.  My expectations for a light read, thankfully, were quashed before the end of the first chapter. Kamen dares to talk about what many women keep under wraps: she outs herself as an intelligent, accomplished woman who experiences pain and fatigue nearly every day of her life.  Women who complain of regular headaches or unpinpointable malaise are often seen as high strung, attention-seeking, or as deeply unhappy people who transform mental anguish into physical pain.

It's a three-layered story that Kamen tells.   In addition to her personal narrative which is populated by clueless allopaths, incense-wielding alternative practitioners, boat loads of pharmaceuticals and cruel and unusual treatments of all sorts, Kamen expends her limited marbles (her way of deciding how to expend energy) to deliver a solid debunking of the “all in your head” notion. Kamen, a self-described third wave feminist, takes old school feminism to task for keeping this predominantly female health issue in the closet, in a wrong-headed attempt to bury the long held belief that women are the “weaker” sex, and, therefore, less reliable in the workplace.

If you’re hoping to learn of Kamen’s miracle cure, you’ll be disappointed. The Headache is still with her, but she has learned to stop looking for meaning in the pain itself. This book is highly recommended for anyone living with chronic illness, from fibromyalgia to migraine to multiple sclerosis. It’s self-help for those who tend to avoid traditional self-help works, delivered with attitude and without syrupy, soft-focus platitudes.  There is so much of value in this book that I'll stop talking about it and suggest you find a copy yourself.

You can stop reading here, or can go on to read entirely too much information about my personal experience with headache and malaise.

 

I don't have the high level of daily pain that plagues Kamen, but as someone for whom "feeling good"  has been a relative term since childhood,  I was so happy and relieved to find this book.  Like Kamen, I thought for sure I was living wrong, and have looked endlessly for reasons that I am often tired, achy (head, neck, arms, whole-body), nauseated, environmentally sensitive and foggy-headed.  I once worked for a woman who said she'd never had a headache, and marveled at what sort of freak of nature she must have been. I've given up liquor and caffeine at various points in my life. I've exercised. I've been a vegetarian. I've gone organic. I've used massage, chiropractic, over-the-counter, and Big Pharma (Kamen's phrase for the pharmaceutical industry). 

The closest Kamen comes to giving a reason for chronic headache, migraine and other chronic pain disorders such as fibromyalgia, is that those who suffer from them appear to be much more neurologically sensitive. She's got recent research to back it up, but I finally came up with that explanation a few years ago when I was taking a grad-level writing course at the local university.  I loved the class, loved the teacher, and loved that I was writing again.  But during that semester, I suffered from the worst migraines I'd ever had.  Several times I had to make dramatic exits from that classroom, in extreme pain and sicker than a dog.  I still have health issues related to how violently ill I was those few months. 

The poet in me wanted to think that I was going through some incredible re-birthing process and that coming back to writing after more than a decade warranted a lot of sturm-und-drang.  Of course, it was nothing of the sort.  What set me off in such dramatic fashion was a malfunctioning fluorescent light bulb.  This was beyond the typical flicker of a dying bulb. It was a light bulb that could have held its own in a David Lynch movie, with a seizure-inducing twitch and a literally sickening buzz.  I thought moving away from it would help, but its vibrating noise saturated the room and wreaked havoc on my tender neurology.  This noise/light sensitivity got a boost from the liberal dosing of coed perfume and cologne that I couldn't seem to escape.  I thought of dropping the class, but suffered through it.  Other people were annoyed by the light, but no one else made a hasty, stumbling exit, hand cupped over their mouth, just in case....  Just li'l ol' delicate me. 

I don't miss a lot of work because of it and I think I seem like an overachiever to many who don't see me daily. But, also like Kamen, I've learned to use my marbles wisely.  There are times when I'm quite sure I could whip this thing, and feel like I'm somehow failing myself.  But All in My Head, will hopefully go a long way to help me and other closet cases go easier on ourselves, and take away some of the whiner stigma.

Comments

[fibromyalgia]

A very intereting article, keep up the great work! :D

[Jenni Prokopy]

Excellent review - Paula is an amazing woman and a great member of the movement to gain recognition and better treatment of women's chronic stuff! I recently reviewed her article as well...http://www.chronicbabe.com/articles/2005/07/all_in_my_head.php

[Paula Kamen]

Thanks to Rochelle for her expenditure of her marbles to make such thoughtful comments about my book. I appreciate how much you "got" the book and what I was trying to do, for those with headaches and other "invisible" problems. I'm sorry that she (and others here) can identify, but then feel gratified that my words are validating. After all, we're all in this together, and the closet is a stuffy place.
Paula Kamen

[rochelle]

I was thinking of you while I was reading the book, and wondering how you were doing. Day 8...that's rotten.

[shoe]

Ahh,yes. I'll have to check this out. Day 8 of the migraine from hell, and I'm staring down a hospitalization for more tests. At the very least, it's nice to know I'm not alone. :)

shoe

[Anna]

Check out segment two of the last "To the Best of Our Knowledge" -- it features Paula Kamen.