After years of demoralizing conventional treatment, a physician tried to scope my nose and discovered something that no scans or xrays showed — bone, broken from a blow to my face as a kid, had grown into the septum of my nose. He was the first physician who ever touched me and really looked at me. When the bone was repaired, the nerve was released and the headaches improved. I think it is possible that facial trauma plays more of a role in face and head pain than we know.

-Beth

Deep sinus infection with no other symptoms. After a year of skull cracking headaches and days spent hiding in a dark room with a pillow wrapped around my head, numerous doctors, cat scans, one bad diagnosis after another (cluster headaches, migranes, etc), oxycoton et al., a small woman doctor from Poland working at a Yale New Haven Out Patient Clinic took an archaic looking device, a long thin pipe with an eye piece on one end, and with my head tilted back slid it up my nose then made her diagnosis. God I love that woman. She prescribed antibotics and on the second day the pain finally, finally, finally began to abate, subside, diminish. Within five days the pain was gone. It’s been about seven years and when I dwell on the memory I still let out a big sigh of relief.

-Gene Bloxsom