It was actually not a big surprise knowing that tension headaches are the most common type of primary headache. It is said that as many as 90% of adults have had or will have tension headaches. Tension headaches are more common among women than men.
That’s what the doctor told me a while ago after a special session I had at the clinic with a neurologist. I felt like a hopeless patient when she did a through check to all my nerve function. I honestly feel like saying, ‘No doc, I am actually ok, please don’t treat me like a patient”. But I know she has to do her job.
Knowing that its my fourth day having this headache, she asked like do you feel tension at your neck? Did you vomiting? Do you experience any high blood pressure before? Do you feel any numbness around your cheek? Do you feel nausea? I feel sorry to her that all the questions she asked was replied by one word, ‘no’, which is good for me and her. From her explanation, she told me that there are so many people suffer from headaches, and because treatment is sometimes difficult, there is a new classification system that allows health care practitioners to understand a specific diagnosis more completely to provide better and more effective treatment regimens. Nowadays they classified headaches into primary headaches, Secondary and cranial neuralgia which then including facial pain and other headaches. Secondary headaches are those that are due to an underlying structural problem in the head or neck. There are numerous causes of this type of headache ranging from bleeding in the brain, tumor, or (these are the most horrible ones) meningitis and encephalitis. When she mentioned vocabularies like migraine, blood pressure, nerve imbalance, and tumor… gee I couldn’t imagine how on earth do I ever get those symptom to hit me.
After about 15 minutes in her room, what’s the diagnose? To my surprise she said that I am actually ok. I just need to sleep and wake up at regular times. And, this is the most impossible one, to reduce tension during work hours and some others. I was prescribed three regiments of medicine. She told me to come back three days later if the medicine don’t do any tricks.
Well, I hope that what I really need is a good weekend and relax days. But for the next 4 days to go, I sure have lots to do. Oh headache… if we can ever stand on our own sides without disturbing to each other.
Jakarta, 25 August 2009.
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