Ask the Clinician: Answers to Readers' Questions

from John Claude Krusz, MD, PhD and Teri Robert

August 24, 2004, page 3

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• 9) I am a 27-year-old female I started having migraines when I was 19 years old. But, in the past 1 1/2 years they have gotten progressively worse. Some weeks I may get 3-4 migraines. I take Zomig and it works well. I also believe chocolate, stress, and hormonal changes may be the triggers for my migraines. About 1 year ago I started developing sensations of numbness in different parts of my body and it didn't seem to have anything to do with my migraine pattern. Sometimes the numbness will be very severe where I have numbness on one side of my body all at one time. Other times, just my lips or one foot will go numb. Sometimes when I am doing aerobics one foot will go numb. This numbness feel similar to when you have your foot or leg "go to sleep". I have had many tests in the past year including a MRI of the brain. They could find nothing wrong on any of the tests. They diagnosed it as a migraine variant. Have you heard of this?
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• 10) I suffer from headaches everyday I take Topamax, Pamelor, and Atacand as daily preventive medications and they do help. When my head starts to hurt extra bad I take a triptan and maybe a butalbital but they just knock back the pain a little bit. I try not to take them everyday to prevent a rebound headache. My Botox shots got denied from my insurance so that is not an option. I go to an actual headache clinic but my head is still hurting 2 years later everyday. What is there left to do? What should I ask my doctor for? Liz.
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• 11) A couple of years ago I began suffering from for a lack of a better word called dizzy spells--after being tested for every ailment in the book, I was connected to a doctor who explained that these spells were actually migraine headache. They share symptoms such as the sensitivity to smells, noise, and light--affect my speech and cause nausea BUT my head does not actually hurt light a headache would. The injections for migraines do give me relief and I use a prescription pain medication. Could these really be classified as migraines? I would like to ask my doctor about the use of Topamax to prevent these episodes which really can shut me down for days at a time. Rhonda.
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• 12) I was riding my horse at a trot, posting, and suddenly got a throbbing headache all over my head. I stopped riding and it went away in several minutes. It was quite severe. I was a little dizzy along with the headache. I have never experienced a headache such as this before. Could this be an exertional headache?
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