Peter Costello
Migraine: Not Just Another Headache
ed. by Dr Marie Murray, compiled by Patrick Little & Audrey Craven (Currach Press, €12.99)
In my time I have suffered from migraines. They are a very unlovely thing indeed, debilitating a person for days, or even weeks, on end. Recurrent and painful though they are, they are not fatal. They also come with mental effects that are also crushing.
Migraine is in a way a little like epilepsy, it is a condition that causes great suffering, but which few others really understand. It is a condition that frightens people, for both seem to evoke fear rather than pity. After all, “Its only a headache”.
This book will be an important aid both to those who are afflicted with the condition in all its varieties, their families, and their social circle, even their employers. It aims to increase understanding, to overcome the prevailing ignorance. But, as we know, nothing is harder, than to shift people’s all too well-fixed notions about social, sexual and medical issues.
Written by some nine contributors with different professional experiences of the condition and its treatment, it carries at the end an important chapter on tips for living with migraine compiled by the Migraine Association of Ireland Helpline team (who can of course be contacted online).
Complex condition
Migraine, as is made clear, is a complex condition. This alone makes it hard to deal with. Matters of genetics and environment enter into it, but also life style, eating habits, inappropriate medication, and failure to seek out support – this last being a very vital point. Treatments change and improve all the time, and both patients and their doctors need to stay up to date. The help is there: don’t suffer at home when wider contacts can provide support, aid, and comfort.
All that said, there are a couple of caveats about the presentation of the book.
While the design is attractive and practical, the type is far too small, and the page too crowded. More importantly, for a book of this kind filled with multifarious facts and topics treated in several places, an index is essential. The contributors should have insisted on one from the publishers.
But as readers of factual books well know, indexes (which cost money to make) are gradually disappearing from books aimed at the popular market: a sad sign of the times. Publishers and writers know what is in a book, the new readers do not.