A common question we are asked as migraine surgeons is whether or not obtaining pain relief with a nerve block is necessary to be a candidate for migraine surgery. In other words, if your neurologist or pain doctor gives you a nerve block and it does not change your pain or symptoms at all, might…
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A young lady was in my office recently, and like so many patients with pain from migraine headaches and/or occipital neuralgia, she had been too many many doctors before me. We discussed the possibility of doing Targeted Injection Mapping, and she became very emotional. She had been through so much over the past three years…
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A traffic accident in Los Angeles? Football injury in college? Even the recent surge in popularity of kickboxing has produced too many head trauma patients that experience chronic migraine headaches after their injury. I recently had an interesting conversation with a woman who had “post-concussion” headaches, but when I asked if she had isolated trauma…
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Ever have that dream where you are in crazy Los Angeles traffic and need to be somewhere but can’t get there and then… you wake up to a migraine? Out in the desert outside of Phoenix or Las Vegas and it’s crazy hot and you cant get cool or water and you wake up to…
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Recently I have found a lot of confusion between migraine surgery and nerve stimulator placement. When discussing surgery with patients or answering their questions online, it seems clear that some patients think they have had migraine surgery but describe the placement of wires and the use of remotes… none of this is used in migraine…
Read Full ArticleMigraine headaches can be unpredictable and difficult to manage. For those of us who are familiar with migraines, this is an understatement. Established migraine headache patients can discuss at incredible length the various things that they have tried to get rid of a migraine, and the difficult thing is that there are so so so…
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Yesterday I saw yet another migraine headache patient who was a week out from her migraine surgery, and yet again this patient was thrilled with the migraine relief. She told me she felt that the migraine surgery changed her life. She was all smiles in the followup appointment, as opposed to completely dreary when I…
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On social media, I’m seeing a lot of panic on multiple group sites in patients who have a normal MRI results in the face of pain symptoms. It is important to remember that many patients with Migraine and most patients with Occipital Neuralgia have NORMAL MRI STUDIES. This should be taken as good news, since…
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Recently one of the Facebook groups for migraine headaches and occipital neuralgia contained and interesting post. A migraine headache patient began by saying that she did not mean to insult anyone, but she could not understand how some migraine headache sufferers could have severe pain and still go about their lives. She alluded that such…
Read Full ArticleRecently I’ve been posting “Triggers of the week” on Instagram, discussing different triggers that cause patients to have migraine headaches. There has been a lot of responses to these posts, with patients chiming in that “even if foods are cooked with wine. Within minutes my head reacts,” or “BRIGHT lights – flashing or not flashing…
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