So Much More Than a Headache : Understanding Migraine through Literature.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Shea, Kathleen.

Series:

Literature & Medicine

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Migraine--Popular works.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

So Much More Than a Headache

Place of Publication:

Ashland : The Kent State University Press, 2020.

Summary:

"English, " wrote Virginia Woolf, "which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache.... let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry." Despite Woolf's astute observation and the apparent dearth of writings on such subjects, editor Kathleen O'Shea has managed to gather a wide selection of helpful excerpts, chapters, poetry, and even a short play in this anthology-all with a view toward increasing our understanding and ending the stigma attached to migraines and migraine sufferers. Unlike clinical materials, this anthology addresses the feelings and symptoms that the writers have experienced, sometimes daily. These pieces speak freely about the loneliness and helplessness one feels when a migraine comes on. The sufferer faces nausea, pain, sensitivity to light, and having the veracity of all these symptoms doubted by others. O'Shea, a professor of literature and a migraine sufferer herself, also includes an original essay of her own reflections. Offered as an alternative not only to medical writing but also to self-help books and internet blogs, So Much More Than a Headache addresses a real omission in the available works on migraine, provides a resource for those who may have underestimated the depth and range of writing on this subject, and challenges the cultural bias that dismisses migraine as "just a headache."

Contents:

Cover

Literature and Medicine

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

In Bed

Part I: What It Feels Like

Introduction

Warning Signs

Migraine

Patterns

Down the Rabbit Hole

The Almanac Branch

The Woman Lit by Fireflies

Sun and Migraine

The Lightning in My Eyes

Migraine: Aura and Aftermath

The Headache

Headaches

On a Headache

The Patient's Perspective: A Friend Like No Other

Red Migraine

I Describe a Migraine

The Voice

When Nietzsche Wept

The Hangover

On His Heid-ake

Void and Compensation (Migraine)

Part II: What People Don't See:The Invisibility of Migraine

The Head-Ache, or an Ode to Health

The Hours

Pain Has an Element of Blank

An Uncommon Pain: Living with the Mystery of Headache

Migraine: The Eternal Return

Hoofbeats in the Head

I Know Upon Awakening

Part III: It's Just a Headache?

A General Feeling of Disorder

Six Explanations for Migraine

Misalliance

The Migraine Mafia

Part IV: It's a Lifelong, Full-Time Job

An Anatomy of Migraine

A Brain Wider Than the Sky

Dear Migraine

Giving up the Ghost

Written the First Morning of the Author's Bathing at Teignmouth, for the Head-Ache

Rachel's House of Pain from Claire's Head

Arms at Rest

Part V: When It's Gone . . .

"On Being Ill"

Deliverance

Morning

Night and Sunrise

The Night-Rider

Half-Skull Days

Permissions Acknowledgments.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781631014178

163101417X

OCLC:

1223089256