Seeking Help for Friend Whose Is an Amazing Mommy

If she hasn't already, I would suggest she go to the Diamond Headache Clinic in Chicago. I went there for migraines and discovered like the other response, that most of them are food related. Since I've cut out some processed meats and such, I don't get the headaches as often. They're great there though.

If it's an issue with pain, I would HIGHLY suggest Lake County Health Pain and Rehab in Mundelein. They specialize in all kinds of pain. They are wonderful and let me bring by boys. I used to have chronic migraines and saw a chiropractor for several years with no progress. After one visit with Dr. Ramos, I went from having a pounding migraine to a mild headache. She's a mom herself and is very caring. She works hard to get to the root of the problem.

ask her if she had a head cold recently. I had a headache that would not go away. It drove me crazy. My Dr. said it was going around and said to drink a lot of caffeine and take claritin. It worked. Strange I now but I was thankful.
Hope that helps.

Has she tried chiropractic adjustment? I would say to go in for an MRI and see if there could be something else, such as a bulging disc in the neck or some type of blockage. Sometimes stress overload can cause tension in the shoulders and back causing headaches or clinching the jaw at night or during the day can cause this too. Even being dehydrated especially during winter can cause massive headaches. I am not sure where she lives but there is a great practice out of Naperville called the Synergy institute. Have her give them a call and they can do a full body assessment ###-###-#### you can ask for either Dr Lee or Dr Wise, both are excellent!

I also vote for the adjustment. And then maybe some food allergy testing. And check for sleep problems.

If they can't find any structural problems or no known cause, then send her to me. I'm a Naturopathic Doctor & I can help her with Classical Homeopathy. I will address her head pain & her nutritional status. Tell her there's hope & she will be able to get off all medications & be pain free & be able to get back to a normal life! I'm in the office Mon-Thurs & I can see her this week. Have her call the office ###-###-####. I'm in Warrenville.
Dr. A.

I had severe headaches for 10 years - I couldn't do anything. The last 3-4 years I suffered were everyday. I would go to sleep with them and wake up with them 24/7. I went everywhere you can possibly think of and no one was able to help. Finally my sister suggested going to the dentist - the dentist knew right away I was clinching my jaw so tight it was causing severe headaches..I think it is called TMJ (it has been so long - I don't remember). Many people grind their teeth and this is a cause of it - they don't' even know it. He gave me a little mouth piece that clipped onto my two front teeth I wore at night. I noticed a difference the next day - it was like night and day. I wore it for about a year and didn't need it any longer.
Good Luck to your friend...I hope this helps!

H.

I've heard TMJ of the jaw can cause this. Maybe have her check with her dentist. It's worth the try! Hope something is found to help her. Thank goodness she has a caring friend like you!

Could be a sinus infection that got overlooked. This happened to me two years ago. I thought it was a high-blood pressure tension headache. I was taking leftover tylenol 3's and nothing was helping. I took my bp and got a normal reading. By the third day i was in the er. After lots of tests and then a catscan, they were able to pinpoint it. Sinus infection. After 2-3 days of antibiotics i was feeling lots better. Now that i know the warning signs i get out my nasal spray to ward off sinus headaches.

I had a similar experience, although I was not hospitalized, I was finally diagnosed with migraines. I am on paim killers along with imatrex, I also found that if I took excedrine migraine when symptoms are coming on that it is helpful. I also started keeping away from my inlaws, who seem to trigger alot of my headaches!

Is it possible that she has cluster headaches? My dad gets those sometimes and they are hard to diagnose but can be excruciating and last for days at a time.

All good suggestions so far - but I'm going to also suggest chiropractic if none of those work. I use both traditional and nontraditional methods of medicine and must say I've been pleasingly suprised at what chiropractic can do. I don't go regularly, but have used a chiro in my neighborhood on and off for a few years and love the resdults. My MD supports chiros - she says "just don't let them crack your neck" - any other adjusting they do can help conditions you wouldn't expect.

Good luck to your friend!

Find as natural of a chiropractor as you can find in your area they can work wonders...especially after being pregnant and delivering 3 kids has bound to have thrown off her spine and aldo she should have her hormone levels checked (most docs do that the wrong way) find a doc nearby at www.armour.com

Yes I get headaches like that..I am going to a chiropractor and it
Is helping me greatly.

I have three boys as well, six and under, so I really feel for your friend. I had tension headaches in college that sound exactly like what she is going through. Getting a massage to loosen up the muscles that are causing the headache was the only way that I found relief. I know of an amazing massage thearpist in Plainfield if she lives in the area!

I hope I am wrong but it sounds like she is having a nervous breakdown due to depression. You did not give much personal info but she has three kids under 5. That’s enough to bring any one to the verge of a nervous breakdown especially if they are super active little boys. Any woman can become depressed but especially those with little kids because if you are a stay at home mom they worry about the loss of their income contribution to the family and they tend to over expend their time and make everything about the kids and forget to make time for themselves. If they work and someone else watches, the kids then they feel guilty because they aren’t there for the kids and when she gets home she has to tackle house chores and the kids. As I said, I hope I’m wrong but I’ve been there and what helped is Lexapro and therapy.

Acupuncture is a good solution! I also suggest public yoga classes and usage of lavendar oil - assuming no allergy to lavendar (rubbed alongside the neck and on the bottoms of the feet). Yoga classes are available seven days a week at www.universalspirityoga.com

I've been there. Went to a neurologist and he gave me two shots in the back of my head. Within 30 minutes it was gone and stayed away. Believe it or not, the medication is along the lines of Botox. However, it is not the Botox to remove wrinkles it's another kind. Something to try!
Barb R.

I had sinus infection a while ago that's main symptom was a horrendous headache. I'm assuming they ruled that out already but it's possible a round of antibiotics will knock it out

I don't know if your friend is still having the headaches, but thought I should throw out this possibility as well: she could have what's called a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), which is basically a hole in the heart. For some reason, people with a PFO can tend to have migraine headaches, and if they have the hole closed through surgery, this seems to help make the headaches go away. I saw this on an episode of "Mystery Diagnosis" - it had a lady on it with this condition and with constant debilitating headaches. Good luck!

I think some moms recommended seeing a chiropractor and I completely agree. You would be amazed at how many chronic pain problems could be solved with a few chiropractic adjustments. It is worth a try, for sure. If you are interested, I can give you the name of my chiropractor in Park Ridge. He has helped me and my whole family. Good luck!

Hello there:
An attorney I work for had a file cabinet fall on her at the office. It was traumatic but she didn't have any open wounds or anything. She had a sort of dent in her forehead where the corner of the cabinet hit her. She has had a headache for months! She is undergoing a lot of treatment and trying different meds but currently nothing has really done the trick. Apparently, when the cabinet fell she injured a disc at the top of her spine. Maybe your friend has some sort of minor back/spinal injury she didn't realize she had. She's had MRIs, brain scans and x-rays? Sorry, that's all I can offer. Hopefully it ends up being something simple and overlooked like a muscle strain or bruised disc or something.....I hope everything works out soon!!
M.

I would get headaches that would go on for 2 to 3 weeks. It was not the same as the migraines. My migraines are usually from dairy, nutra sweet, wine or not enough sleep. This year my doctor stated me on Clartin every day even though it did not seem like sinus headaches. It has helped alot. I have not had a 3 week long headache in months now.

I am dealing with this through a very good friend of ours! Very sad. She was briefly hospitalized recently and has been dealing with terribly severe headaches for 3 months to the point that it has basically halted her life. She, too is on an addictive-type heavy duty pain med.

Her dr. recently agreed to let her get an an MRI (please don't ask me WHY they haven't done one sooner - it's been a ridiculous path that she has had to take to convince her dr. that she needs an MRI! - Good insurance - no health concerns would restrict her from having one.) She is awaiting the results. She has had a CAT scan and it is normal.

What she does know is that her neck is very straight - lacking any normal curvature. She also has been recently seen a dr. who believes that she is allergic to gluten and possibly dairy and is taking the necessary steps to eliminate this from her system. She does see a chiropractor, however, he could be aggravating her condition without knowing it - because of the lack of MRI.

Very sad for your friend. I hope she gets an MRI - it can stem from the neck, sinuses, allergies, etc.... My sister eliminated dairy from her diet, because her dr. believed it caused her the severe sinus problems/headaches. She has been free from them for a year. Also, trying to just briefly eliminate gluten (there are still so many things you can eat that don't have gluten). If she is a carb-a holic or loves dairy,sometimes it is what you crave that becomes what you are sensitive in, so, I would definitely look at her diet.

Please keep us posted. Thanks for caring!

My sister age 25 had suffered from these headaches, so bad she'd have to leave work she was so dizzy and lay in darkness for days. The doctors couldn't figure it out, they said it was either tension or migraine. It ended up being her impacted molars hitting nerves, once those were pulled the headaches ceased.

I'm not a doctor, but I had a brain aneurysm in 1995. I'm sure they checked her for that. It sounds very similar. I hope she is okay. (Mine was very hard to find bc of where it was...They tested for 4 days, knowing it was there, somewhere...) G-d bless.

There is a great book called "Say Good-bye to Headaches" by Devi Nambudripad.

It shows hows many headaches stem from undiagnosed allergies.

The website to get this from (aside from Amazon) is NAET.com. NAET is a technique done that tests a person for 100+ different allergies and then elminates them. It is amazing. Go to the naet.com to find a practitioner. Our insurance covers it.

I found out that I would get terrible headaches from food coloring and chocolate of all things. Its so worth it to educate yourself.

We go to Dr. Tam in Lombard. He is fabulous- does a 1 hour consultation and goes over EVERY thing imaginable about your health history, looks at tongue, under eye circles, bruising, skin, eyes, etc and then tests you for the allergens coupled with good nutrition, etc...rather than just talking to you for 5 minutes an shoving a perscription in your hand.

Its so worth it to get to the root cause of the problem.
Good luck!!!!!

My husband is a chiropractor and deals with this all the time. He uses a Proadjuster at his practice which is less scary than a manual adjustment, for people that are nervous or have never seen a chiropractor. His office is in Sycamore but also is affiliated with offices in Elmhurst and Bartlett, Olympic Chiropractic www.olympicchiropractic.com. Let me know if you have any questions at all!

I totally agree about diet- migraines can be caused by sulfites and nitrates/nitrites in foods, sometimes dairy, and sometimes even sugar and sugar substitutes.

I would suggest she try a homeopathic dr as well. There are some homeopathic remedies that can also be used with mainstream pain relievers. Boiron is a good brand (can be found at Whole Foods, vitamin stores, etc). Try Arnica Montana (both the pills and the cream) for pain. They also have a Migraine pill (I buy mine at Drugstore.com). You can also press on pressure points (the indentations in the back of your skull- one on either side of your spine) and massage the "fatty" part of your hand where your thumb and first finger connect.
A drop of peppermint essential oil in the middle of your forehead sometimes works too.

Hope she is feeling better soon. I assume she has had MRI/CT scans that rule out brain tumors, etc....

M.
(long time sufferer of migraines, cured by eliminating dairy and nitrates...)

My husband gets horrible migraines that kept landing him in the hospital. We finally went to the Diamond Headache Clinic in Chicago (it's attached to the Children's Memorial Hospital. The first visit is kind of long because they do a full work up - cat scans, mris, etc...but they were able to get his headaches under control relatively quickly compared to all the other doctors. Check your insurance first, because that can be pricey - we have BCBS-IL and all of that work fell under one co-pay because of the way they billed it. So, my husband gets an annual mri/catscan/blood work, etc. all for our $20 co-pay and his headaches are under control. Good luck to her!

This is going to sound crazy but my next door neighbor had the same issue. Nothing made her headache go away and no dr could find anything wrong with her. She then started watching what she ate and cutting out anything she thought could possilbly be causing the problem. She stopped using all products with Splenda and her headaches went away and have not returned.

did they do a cat scan at the hospital? my sister-in-law forwarded to me a "worm tumor" video from fox news, a mom had terrible headaches, they did a cat scan & though they saw a tumor they opereated and it was acutaully a living worm that burrowed into her brain, the brain surgeon said it was the 5th worm he's removed, evedentally she got it from eating meat that wasn't cooked all the way or from eating food prepared by someone w/ unwashed hands

good luck to her

while she might some distance from menopause, say in her 30's, she could be in perimenopause - in that case magnesium, black cohosh, yam supplements might help. Also cranial sacral therapy is wonderful for aligning the spine and reducing the tight muscle tension that occurs around the scalp, which creates headaches. The fluid in the brain needs to flow and that therapy is helpful, along with a massage for hands and feet and shoulders. I am not a fan of neck cracking (yikes) but Yoga has wonderful postures that will release tension. Blessings to her and to you for caring.