Book Excerpt
EXCERPT FROM HEADACHE SOLUTIONS AT THE DIAMOND HEADACHE CLINIC
The Ex-Infantryman
We are including an excerpt from the book, Headache Solutions at the Diamond Headache Clinic. The book was written by Doctor Diamond in collaboration with Brad Torphy, MD. The book is available for purchase at Amazon.
It is a myth. It is not true that headache victims are somehow, in ways subtle or obvious, weaker than the rest of us. It is not true that they collapse under stress. It is simply that they are attacked by a particular kind of pain for reasons which they themselves cannot altogether recognize.
About 20 years ago, Gregory Wilson was a squarely built, chesty man of fifty who wore his authority with easy assurance. His black bushy hair was edged with gray. He talked in short staccato phrases. His father was one of the most famous men in journalism and he himself had built a formidable career in business: he was one of the top public relations men in one of the largest corporations in the United States. He was a hard-driving man who liked to busy himself outside of his job with other writing projects. He was as successful in them as he was in the rest of his career.
Some 16 years ago, he had been attacked by severe and recurring headaches. There is every indication that he had a migraine personality and he, for one, was convinced that they were migraine. He remained convinced of that, although I disagreed with him.
Although he was in a stress-filled job, he was not easy prey to stress of an exceptional kind.
He had been a combat infantryman during two tours in Vietnam, and he suffered no particular stress under the most violent conditions. He did not even suffer from lack of sleep.
Early in the 1990s, he took a year’ s leave of absence from work to run for Congress. It did nothing but make him feel better.“ Despite a grueling 16-hour day, 7-days-a-week schedule of campaigning which taxed mind and body, I never had a single headache, upset stomach, or sleepless night,” he said.“ The increased work load and responsibility made me peppier than ever before in my life.”
He was in his early thirties when the headaches first became burdensome. He checked with his company physician, underwent a detailed checkup, and found that he was a diabetic. That was a strange in terms of migraine action. Diabetics are likely to find that their migraine is reduced, not increased, with the onset of the disease.“ I believe your headaches are due to tension,” the doctor reported to him. But once the belief was stated, the relief did not follow.
Over the years, he consulted a good many distinguished physicians in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere to seek help for his headaches, but none was forthcoming. One winter he was vacationing in Tucson, Arizona, where he went to an excellent physician for both headaches and diabetes. The doctor gave him a long technical article on headaches to read and he found my name mentioned. He found it again when he returned home and read a story on headaches by a science writer. He knew the writer involved, so he checked me out, and then arranged for an appointment.
We gave him the in-office physical. He’ d just had a very extensive battery of hospital tests. Fearful of a brain tumor, he’ d checked into one the finest hospitals in Chicago and come out with a report that he was free of tumor or other abnormalities in the brain and skull. But he still had his headaches.
Between the hospital reports and my in-office procedures, we were able to eliminate organic problems as a cause of his headaches. As for his diabetes, he was taking a bedtime dose of longacting insulin glargine( Lantus). He reported that his blood glucose was under control.
8 HeadWise ® | Volume 7, Issue 1 • 2018