Patti Glover was knocked sideways by headaches that felt like an ice pick and had been misattributed to migraines. Then a new doctor asked a key question.
Glover, then in her mid-30s, was standing in front of a bathroom mirror fixing her hair while getting ready for work as a craps dealer at a Las Vegas casino when she was struck by pain that felt like an ice pick piercing the right side of the top of her head. The pain was so intense she staggered backward and hit a closet door before sinking to her knees, clutching her head.
It wasn’t until a new headache specialist, the seventh neurologist she saw, asked new key questions that Glover learned what was causing the excruciating episodes. An MRI and a CT scan showed no sign of a serious brain abnormality. Doctors did find a benign cyst in her, a part of the brain involved in sensation and perception. Glover spent a night in the hospital, where she was given injections of a painkiller. The headache disappeared.
But as physicians were unable to explain her unusual headaches, Glover said she “did wonder if I was bringing this pain on. And then one of the attacks hit and I thought, ‘No way am I doing this to myself.’” Other doctors seemed to agree., although she never experienced nausea, an aura, sensitivity to sound or light or a throbbing sensation, which are characteristics of migraines. She took the migraine medicine she was prescribed sporadically because it didn’t seem to make a difference.
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