Its' All in Your Head

If you have never had a headache, you probably don’t really understand what good health, or “feeling good” really means. Generally, a headache is not merely an ache affecting only your head. It can also encompass eyes, sinuses, jaws, and ears. 

A humdinger of a headache can also include your neck (you have heard the phrase “pain in the neck”) on down to your back and around the front to your belly, at which point you would love to vomit the contents of all recent meals if it would just make you stop hurting.

Headaches can be triggered by allergies, fatigue, barometric changes, etc. but for many years the malady was treated as “it’s all in your head” (how obvious!), and this remark was generally directed toward the ladies.  

Until some vocal males of the species spoke out, it seems that it was unmanly for a man to suffer with a headache. Yet I know my Dad suffered with headaches often, as does his son, and one of my sons. (Manliness or the lack thereof has nothing to do with the propensity of suffering this malady.)

 

I am enclosing a picture of Rodin's "The Thinker" because I really think he might have posed with a headache. I have assumed this position for various reasons, but headache seems to fit as well as thinking. 

In our early married years, my husband could not understand why I would have headaches. He was mostly sympathetic, but clearly puzzled. Now that he has suffered a few himself, the empathy is there. Personally, I can remember having headaches back as far as six years of age, probably due to food allergies. So headaches have been a part of my life for longer than many of my friends have been alive. Not a cheerful thought.

I’d like to say headaches are no longer a part of my life, but that is not the case. However, age has ameliorated the frequency, a little. So cheer up, headache sufferers, you may grow out of them. For the rest of you who will never suffer that particular pain, my sympathy is extended since you don’t know how good you have it.