Headaches

I get headaches.  Fortunately lately I haven’t been getting them nearly as often, but me and headaches, we’ve got a history.

About two years ago I started getting headaches every time after I did a long run.  If I ran anything more than about 6 miles or so I’d get a headache.  I’d feel great while I was running and then about a half an hour or so after I had finished I get hit with a monster headache.  No drugs could make it go away, and absolutely nothing could make me feel better- I just had to wait it out.  And then, miraculously after 5, 6, sometimes 7 hours had passed it would be gone as quickly as it had come.

Then it started to get progressively worse.  I started getting headaches after shorter runs, all the way up until the point that if I even ran just one mile, I’d get a headache afterwards.  NOT COOL.

At first I thought it was dehydration, so I started to be very conscious of how much water I was drinking throughout the day.  No dice.  Didn’t help a bit.

Then I thought it might be a vitamin deficiency.  I remembered (from a nutrition course I took in college) that cracking at the corners of your mouth (which I was getting frequently) was a symptom of a vitamin deficiency, but I couldn’t remember which vitamin it was.  A quick Google search revealed that it was one of the B vitamins, so I started taking an extra vitamin B complex.

The headaches persisted.

I went to my regular doctor, who then sent me to a neurologist.  The neurologist gave me the absolute most useless diagnosis ever.  He said that I had “Exercise-induced headaches”.  I asked why I just started getting them- I had never gotten them before.  His oh-so-helpful answer? “Well, sometimes that JUST HAPPENS.  You didn’t get them before, but you get them now.  Maybe next year you won’t get them anymore.  Maybe you will.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Ahh.

Thank you for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  Seriously?  I mean, I would be just fine with it if someone gave me an actual REASON even if there truly was nothing I could do about it.  But just saying, “Well, that’s the way it is” seems like a joke of a diagnosis.  I mean, I’m no medical expert by any means, but I think our medical professionals should be held to some sort of standards here.

Anyway.

I basically had to quit running.  I didn’t really have a choice- the doctor’s weren’t helping me and these headaches were debilitating.  If I ran in the morning the headache would knock me out of commission for the entire day.  I couldn’t keep taking sick days because of these headaches.

About a year after this all started I went back to my regular doctor.  Right when I had first started getting the headaches a prescription that I was on had been changed slightly- I had mentioned this to my doctor- that the changing of the prescription and the onset of the headaches had both happened at about the same time, but she had immediately told me that couldn’t be the cause.  So I believed her.  Because she’s a doctor and I am not.  When I went back to her after a year of awful headaches and being forced to give up running I was to the point of not caring that she was a doctor and I was not.  I told her to switch me back to the formula of the prescription that I had originally had and I didn’t care that she had said that it wasn’t the cause of my headaches.

Guess what happened next?  My headaches miraculously began to ease up.  I could go for a run without being miserable for the rest of the day.  You can bet your life that although I was thrilled to be running again, I was pretty darn dissatisfied that this simple solution took a year of misery to come to.  Especially since my doctor(s) were no help whatsoever.

I’ve gotten through all of my marathon training so far with hardly any headaches.  The few that I’ve gotten have been no where near the level of the ones I got before and can be eased with some Excedrin so that I can continue to function throughout the day.  It feels incredible and even a little bit unbelievable that I can run 10 miles and not have a headache afterwards now- these headaches had become a sad, miserable part of my life that were inescapable if I ever went running and to not have that big dark cloud of misery hanging over my head anymore is SO amazing!  I guess that’s the silver lining of that big dark cloud- it has made me so appreciative and grateful for the ability to run.  It’s not something that any of us should take for granted.

Have any of you ever had something like this happen to you- headaches or otherwise?  Or have any of you had frustrating experiences with a lack of help from medical professionals?  How did you deal with it?