this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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Have any of my fellow migraineurs read the new The Headache, by Tom Zeller Jr.? (A review)
It's an absolutely essential book, both for us and for anyone we meet. The author is a sufferer of cluster headaches, and the dude gets it. So many stories in here that I thought were particular to my own fucked up situation - hoarding medication, having to try the same goddamn preventative meds that don't work just to appease an insurance company, the endless battle with side effects, having to avoid being seen as "drug-seeking" when all I am is well-informed and with a long experience of what works and what doesn't, the weird stigmas that chronic patients face, etc. Other chapters go through the history of headache science and discuss how treacherously underfunded and disrespected the whole enterprise is (because most migraineurs are women; because there are sexier neurological conditions; because headache doctors burn out at a higher rate than other doctors, discouraged by how seldom their patients improve; because of capitalism).
I could stand for everything to be a bit more vociferously anti-capitalist, but the on-the-ground accounts of dealing with insurance companies and operating according to their fucked-up logic certainly speak for themselves, and as Zeller puts it somewhere in a middle chapter, to account for everything wrong with the U.S. health care system would necessitate a much, much larger book.
A perfect gift for your boss or your friends who've started getting annoyed at how you constantly have to cancel plans at the last minute.
Thanks for the tip, I'll add it to my wishlist.
The average medical student gets a grand total of three hours of training on headache disorders. (page 109)
The average migraine patient spends "seven years navigating a skein of primary care physicians, emergency rooms, and other waypoints in the health care labyrinth before receiving an accurate diagnosis." (page 105)
I'll add this to my recommendations list, appreciate you sharing.