I’ve posted about this before, but my fiance has these horrible headaches and the doctors cannot seem to help him. They’ll start out mild and then get worse day-by-day over a 2-3 month period, usually ending with him in the ER. They are at the base of his skull, not like a typical migraine. This time around he had shooting pains that went through his head, so bad that I came home one evening to find him sweating and puking and laying on the bathroom floor. He could barely walk.
He’s been to a few different neurologists and other doctors, but no one can ever seem to help him or pinpoint what’s wrong. We joke that he needs Dr. House to help him.
Right now the headaches have stopped, but I think he needs to figure this thing out before it starts up again. Has anyone here been to the Mayo Clinic? I am just wondering what it’s like and if they are as good as they sound.
Sorry I don’t know anything about the Mayo clinic. But I do know that University of Michigan Medical Center has a Head Pain & Neurological Institute. All head pain, all the time, since 1978. http://www.mhni.com/intro.html
There is a Mayo Clinic in Florida where my father goes for his arthritis, and he and my mother have great things to say about them. They were impressed at the thoroughness of the workup that is done, and everything is done right there at the clinic, and scheduled very efficiently. I think my dad was given a schedule of many departments/tests to be done throughout the day, to make sure his time was well spent (it’s in a part of Florida where they do not live). And the treatment has been extremely successful.
Mayo has a tremendous (and deserved, for the most part) reputation for its clinical consultations. My dad went there years ago for confirmation of his uncommon lung disease (which Peter Benchley just died of).
They are quite efficient at the whole thing. Visit their website and/or give them a call if you want more info. If your insurance covers it and you can get there without much hardship, I’d say it would be an excellent place to go for an extremely thorough evaluation by experts.
QtM, who never trained at Mayo and has no vested interest in them and thinks Hopkins is probably better, but it is further from circle city than Rochester is.
Y’know, a few years back the University of Minnesota were asking for volunteers for a study of headaches and migraines. I called them because I have never had a headache in my life, and I thought, well, maybe that might be of interest. It wasn’t. Oh, well.
My experience with the doctor I used to work for referred a couple patients to Mayo Clinic is that we’d send a cover letter and copy of patient chart to Mayo for evaluation. If Mayo thinks they are able to help in a way that my neurologist isn’t, they’ll accept the referral. If they think the care is adaquate and they can’t improve on the care the patient is getting, they’ll send back a letter refusing the referral.
Tell your fiance not to lose hope. For years, I suffered from an ailment that no doctor could seem to pinpoint. I saw dozens before I finally found a doctor who found the problem and treated it correctly. She wasn’t a specialist-- just a very good doctor who was a voracious reader of new medical literature.
Whether or not he ends up going to the Mayo, or other clinics people have suggested in this thread, tell him to keep looking until he finds the help he needs. Yes, it’s a laborious, tedious process, but it’s very much worth it when you finally find a doctor who can help you. It took me about three years, but the results changed my life.
I’m sorry I don’t know anything about the Mayo Clinic, which is what you specifically asked - but has your fiance been tested for Lyme Disease?? I had some extremely painful headaches (that would make me pray for death) before I was diagnosed with Late Stage Lymes. He probably doesn’t have this, but I just felt I would put it out there just in case. (The headaches were one of the first symptoms I had. I wish I’d been diagnosed earlier.)
Anyway, good luck to you and your fiance Indygrrl . Hopefully he’ll get the help he needs soon!