Educate Yourself About Ailment

Dear Ann Landers: I’m a neurologist specializing in headache treatment, so I took particular note of your column about headache remedies from banana peels to potatoes. I can add frozen sunfish and bags of frozen peas to the items patients have applied to their heads, with varying benefit.

Headache is not always a minor disorder that responds easily to such simple cures. Each month in the United States, approximately 3 million days are spent in bed by headache sufferers. Many of these people are in excruciating pain, unable to tolerate even the light from a bedside lamp or the sound of a child’s step. Some vomit repeatedly. For them, trying to cure a headache with banana peels is like trying to irrigate the Sahara by spitting.

There are many good treatments that can improve the lives of nearly all headache patients, and several new medications will be approved shortly. There are also two organizations dedicated to education and support for headache sufferers: the American Council for Headache Education at 1-800-255-ACHE (www.achenet.org) and the National Headache Foundation at 1-800-843-2256 (www.headaches.org). Both offer newsletters, support groups and lists of physicians skilled in treating headaches.

Thank you, Ann, for letting me help your readers. - Lynne Geweke, M.D., Midwestern Neurologic and Psychiatric Consultants, Minneapolis

Dear Dr. Geweke: I appreciate your informed contribution. I hope the organizations listed are prepared for the response from my readers. Thank you on behalf of all the people you helped today.

Dear Ann Landers: After I read the letter from the widow who discovered she was not the recipient of her husband’s insurance benefits, I phoned my husband’s life insurance carrier. Sure enough, his ex-wife was still listed as the beneficiary. I then called his stock and savings plans manager and learned that his ex-wife was the beneficiary there, as well. This possibility never crossed my mind, and when I mentioned this to my husband, he said he hadn’t thought about it, either.

My husband and I would like to thank the woman who wrote to you about this. If I hadn’t seen her letter, I would not have given it a thought. You certainly do a lot of good with your column, Ann. - Grateful in Georgia

Dear Georgia: Thanks for your kind words. Meanwhile, I’ll bet your letter will serve as another wake-up call for husbands and wives who read that first letter and meant to check out their spouse’s insurance policy but didn’t. Go do it, folks.

Dear Ann Landers: You recently printed a letter from a woman whose mother had spent a great deal of money on a sweepstakes scam. I sympathize with her because I did the same foolish thing.

When I got on a roll, nothing could stop me. I was hooked. I have magazines that I couldn’t read if I lived to be 100. My home is jammed with radios that don’t play, telephones that don’t work, cheaplooking jewelry and worthless binoculars.

My husband humored me for a while, but finally, he became annoyed at my gullibility and convinced me that I was being taken, big time. I’m a lot smarter now and wonder how I could have been such a sucker. Pass the word again, Ann. For some folks, once is not enough. - Wiser in Northern California

Dear N.C.: I’ve already passed the word, several times in fact, but for those who are still living in a dream world, maybe one more nudge is needed. Thanks for providing it.