Ah, modern medicine! Stella has been suffering sustained headaches for about 24 hours now; I don't know if they're migraines but if they are, I hope this new procedure developed at Albany Medical Center and SUNY Empire State College can help her.
First a few details:
Minimally invasive migraine treatment 'reduced painkiller use in 88% of patients'
At the Society of Interventional Radiology's Annual Scientific Meeting, clinicians from Albany Medical Center and the State University New York Empire State College in Saratoga Springs, NY, explained how the new treatment - image-guided, intranasal sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) blocks - provided ongoing relief to migraine patients.
"Migraine headaches are one of the most common, debilitating diseases in the United States, and the cost and side effects of medicine to address migraines can be overwhelming," says Dr. Kenneth Mandato, the study's lead researcher and an interventional radiologist at Albany Medical Center.
"Intranasal sphenopalatine ganglion blocks are image-guided, targeted, breakthrough treatments," he elaborates. "They offer a patient-centered therapy that has the potential to break the migraine cycle and quickly improve patients' quality of life."
...
The treatment is minimally invasive and involves 4% lidocaine being administered to the patient via a "spaghetti-sized catheter" inserted through the patient's nasal passage. Through this route, the lidocaine is delivered to the patient's sphenopalatine ganglion - a bundle of nerves just behind the nose that are associated with migraines.
...
Well, OK, that sounds good! Now the doggerel...
Research and Envelopment
Your head hurts? Great!
Now Empire State
Has something for your pain:
If you're not dead,
They've got a med
That goes against migraine.
With Albany,
Their SPG
Is playing with your blocks:
Their tiny hose
Goes up your nose...
Don't squirt it on your socks!
The lidocaine
Will ease your pain
(For eighty-eight percent of you);
Now bring your purse:
You won't get worse...
But they will have their rent of you!
- SB the YDD
I was rescued from my migraines by accident. My heart medications were becoming a problem for me and my Internist decided to get more aggressive and prescribed Amlodipine (5mg for a 210 pound male). Well, other than the leg swelling, it worked quite well. To my complete surprise it also cured my migraines. I haven't had one since. Not even when staring at flickering fluorescent lights. It's worth asking about if you suspect migraines. (I personally though that migraines were a factitious disorder especially invoked by malingerers. Then, my doctor, in response to a visual issue I occasionally had, he said, "that's a migraine!"
ReplyDeleteShirt, I'm glad you got some relief, by whatever means. I've had no more than two or three migraines in my entire life, at least that's all that were recognizable as such, and I'm very, very glad I don't have them on a regular basis... they compared to a regular headache about the way being hit by a train compares to being hit by a bicycle. Chronic migraines must be a terrible fate indeed.
DeleteWe don't know what Stella's headache is, or was... she's been at work and gone to several appointments today, and I haven't seen her today to ask her. Houston has had a series of weather fronts coming through this week; some of them caused my amputation stump to ache... that's nothing particularly unusual, but if the weather makes me ache, it often makes other people ache if they're susceptible to that sort of thing. Stella is one of those discouragingly healthy people who eat right, exercise regularly, etc. etc., so it's rare that anything makes her hurt, but everyone I know experiences weather-related aches sometime or another.