Early this afternoon, while I was at work, I experienced a sharp, sudden pain in a very specific place on my head. I've had these before, once in a great while, and while it's briefly terrifying - "OMG aneurysm!" - it lasts only a few seconds and then goes away.
Well, this time, it didn't go away. Or it did, but then came back.
Repeatedly.
In fact, by the time I got home around 1:30 pm, I was kinda having them frequently, and they were getting pretty intense. Eventually, I told my kid to Google "stabbing pain in head." I felt I should probably get some idea of whether this was a known symptom of some known condition, and since I lack health insurance, I wasn't going to a doctor unless I absolutely had to.
After a while, my son said, "Hey Mom, I found it. They're called ice pick headaches."
Okay, I have to admit, that cracks me up. I was expecting some hard-to-pronounce medicalese terminology, and what do I get? Ice pick headache. It made me wish for one of those arrow-through-the-head things like Steve Martin used to wear, only with, you know, an ice pick.
Seriously! Just look:
They're "ice pick headaches." They are short, stabbing, extremely intense headaches that can be absolutely terrifying. They generally only last between five and 30 seconds. However, they come out of nowhere, can strike anywhere on the head, literally feel as if an ice pick is being stuck into your head, then disappear before you can even figure out what's happening.
Well, okay, it's not the "real" name for the condition.
International Headache Society's (IHS) criteria, the official name for them is "primary stabbing headache. Other terms that have been used are idiopathic stabbing headache jabs and jolts, ophthalmodynia, and periodica. Ice pick headaches is probably the most commonly used term because it's the most descriptive.
So yeah, anyway, horrible, intense, stabbing pains. Apparently, they are related to migraine, in that they tend to occur in people prone to migraine headaches. (Yep, that's me.) And they can occur singly or in a series, such as I've been experiencing.
Another thing that cracked me up was the article on ice pick headaches at a site dedicated to migraine info. Right under the title "The jab of an ice pick headache..." they offered this visual aid:
How cute is that? Because the name "ice pick headache" apparently isn't descriptive enough, they kindly provide a picture of the business end of an actual ice pick. The first paragraph of the article says this:
Just say the words ice pick headache, and anyone who's had one knows exactly what you're talking about! But first, we're not simply talking about an ice cream headache... The headaches we're talking about here are very severe, and feel like jabs from a needle that may only last a second.
I love how they've already undercut that first sentence by having posted the picture. Not only that, but they also felt the need to let us know that ice cream headaches are different entirely. I only wish they had offered a visual representation of that other kind of headache, something like this:
Would have been a nice touch, don't you think?
And now, the stabbing sensation has sort of mellowed and spread (doesn't make sense, I know) into something that I recognize as possibly being the precursor to a full-blown migraine, so I guess that's the end of this diary.
Just one thing - I need a pic to represent an ice truck headache, which is what I think a full-blown migraine should be nicknamed. Any suggestions?