NHF Conference: Bridging the Gap Between Patient and Clinician

It's been almost a year since I have written here. For various reasons, of course, that I won't bore anyone with at this time.

However, this year the National Headache Foundation has begun an inaugural process of hosting several conferences around the country in order to promote patient, physician, and public awareness of the burden of migraine and other headache disorders on the economy and the population. It stresses communication between communities, patients and doctors, as well as the people in life who do not experience migraine but who are frequently affected by it; i.e., employers and other family members of migraine sufferers.

I volunteered at the St. Louis event this past Saturday, March the 26th, and I am going to begin here by writing about my experiences with the NHF as well as highlights from the conference. I may have to write this in 2 parts, as I've been struggling with severe migraines since Saturday and I've currently had a Xanax and some Maxalt to knock a 9/10 migraine back down to a whimper. So stick with me, I plan on writing a lot about my experience with the NHF.

I volunteered for the morning physician section. Unfortunately, all of the physicians who signed up for the conference did not show up. Probably about 50% of those who signed up actually came. I was very disappointed that my own migraine specialists called to cancel. I do not know their reasons, so I can't be too critical, but I was disappointed. However, they supplied a lot of supplemental material to the doctors who headed the conference.

I ended up staying on for the afternoon patient sign-in too. One of the volunteers also called in saying she would not be making it. Again, disappointed by this turn of events, and I do not know why she couldn't make it, but we made it through anyway.

Since we had a quiet few hours before the patient program, I was able to take a walk around some of the booths they had set up for advertising. Early in the morning there were only a few promotional people there, but I took advantage of the two gentlemen who were advertising for the new Imitrex delivery system, the Sumavel DosePro. Basically this little contraption is a pen that injects Imitrex into the skin by using an air injection system instead of a needle. They have an excellent coupon program for this delivery system Rx so if you are interested try www.sumaveldosepro.com and check them out.

The patient program began at 1:30PM, and at this point I was allowed to leave my volunteer post to listen to the conference. Participating doctors included Roger Cady, Todd Schwedt, Richard Sohn, and Rob Nicholson. Each physician concentrated on one area of interest to migrainuers, which I will go into depth with my next post. After this initial conference, patients were ushered into one of four rooms where they held break out sessions, each dealing with a different facet of migraine treatments and current research. Unfortunately, due to my own migraine issues, I was unable to attend these sessions even though I was deeply interested in each of the subjects these doctors were lecturing on.

However, the preceding conference which I was able to attend was a fantastic overview of migraine epidemiology and medications which should have been highly educational to the patients who attended. My next article (or the one thereafter as I havent't yet decided how to break my comments down yet) will hopefully yield some knowing nods from those of you who know the foe you are up against. Some topics that were covered include migrainous stroke, rebound or MOH, and lifestyle management for the chronic migraineur. Also of interest was the physician desire to move away from the term "headache" for migraines, as they would instead like the disease to be known for what it is, a syndrome for which the head pain is only one part of the migraine process, and while debilitating, it is only one part that factors into an entire slew of debilitating symptoms.

Unfortunately this is all I have the effort to write at the moment. I am fairly exhausted with my own struggles this week, but I will attempt to continue my review of the conference within the week.

Stay posted.