All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache

A friend of mine is a nurse working in a chronic pain ward in a major hospital. They get the cases where conventional doctors have given up. The patients typically have been through the ringer that Ms. Kamen describes, but often with a dependency on hard drugs as well. As Ms. Kamen says Western medicine has a strong tendency to depend on drugs over anything else. Ms. Kamen tells her story with wit, with honesty, and with a way of conveying information that I've never seen before. This book should be in every doctors office for the thankfully few that will need it. Those few, however, will need it very badly.

I, too, am a "tired girl," suffering from some atypical facial pain -- which means doctors can't figure it out -- for almost two years. It was great to read Kamen's book becuase she voiced so many of the same feelings I've experienced since the pain began: Hurt and disappointed when loved ones and friends suggested the pain was stress related or psychosomatic; angry and sad when people couldn't understand why I had to cancel or reschedule or needed more flexibility; and, most important, the hopelessness and despair of being sick for so long and giving up rather enjoyable parts of my life because of the pain. Some have criticized Kamen for not giving some medical treatments enough time to work. When in constant pain, it's difficult to invest too much time when the side effects add more pain or cause other troubling issues. Taking a few weeks alone for something to work is a lifetime to a chronic pain sufferer. Kamen does a thorough job of providing details about her medical background and exploring the stigma attached to migraine sufferers and others afflicted with chronic pain. And kudos to Kamen for fighting the pain and coming to peace with it as well as sharing her journey with us!

This memoir approaches chronic headache pain from every perspective, developed through her own experience and urgent research: types, sources, doctors, drugs, the pharmaceutical industry, alternative medicine, spirituality, self image, coping, social attitudes, history of approaches and views -- you get the idea. Ms. Kamen is an excellent writer and I enjoyed her spirit and her wit, which she never over-uses as some writers do. She takes a massive amount of information and experience and integrates it in a meaningful way, which is an enormous accomplishment. I have had chronic migraines (though nothing as unremitting as hers), and learned a lot from this book.

Hooray for Ms. Kamen- after reading hundreds of books on chronic pain, this very gifted author has created a funny and very helpful path out of the Guilt Woods with this marvelous book. If you suffer from ANY kind of chronic pain- do yourself a favor and read this book. For the millions of us who have been used as lab rats by the pharmaceutical industry- Ms. Kamen's book offers insight that can help you find your own voice again.

Paula Kamen, a thirtysomething author and lecturer from Chicago, has suffered from a mysterious headache (sometimes just bad, sometimes nearly intolerable) pretty much nonstop for the last fifteen years. In this smart, gutsy, no-holds-barred memoir, we follow her as she tries--with Herculean effort and Bhuddist patience--to find relief. It is not a pretty journey she is forced to undertake. Kamen escorts her reader through the decade and a half of her headache hell, but somehow manages to do it (unbelievably!) with a quirky, never-give-in sense of humor. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in reading this book, you might well be doing a lot of crying and a lot of laughing. The number of shills, quacks, charlatans, and snake-oil salesmen who parade throughout the chapters will give you a jolt. But the book is a lot more: Kamen spends a lot of time looking at how chronic pain, when it is not able to be quickly and successfully treated, starts creating resentment in the minds of medical professionals, in the minds of the families of chronic-pain sufferers, and (most tragically) in the minds of chronic-pain sufferers themselves. Much more than just a memoir of a single person's frustrations and travails, this book also offers a broad look at chronic pain in the United States today. Kamen has done her scientific research, and shares it (without going overboard or turning her book into a medical study) generously if compactly with her readers. The appendix of resources at the end of the book is particularly helpful, as is the bibliography. Like a pissed-off Joan of Arc, Kamen spends "All In My Head" wading in the medical, cultural, and social quagmire into which chronic-pain sufferers slowly sink, and, from the first page to the last, she's fighting. This book is a must-read for those with chronic pain, and highly recommended for their friends and families. In Paula Kamen they have found a co-traveler and ally.