A patient’s perspective on finding treatment for migraine and a provider who believed her

Dear Dr. Becker, thank you for taking the time to read about my experience. I can assure you that the migraine community in Canada is very grateful for your work and research in this field. I have turned my frustration and pain into advocacy and support for others so some good has come from this experience. My experience is not unusual. While I think that a great deal of pressure is placed on physicians to solve problems, after living with chronic migraine for several years I can assure you I had absolutely no expectations that a physician would take my pain away. My greatest hope was to see a marginal reduction in my pain, a tiny improvement in my quality of life. My point is simply that there is an ethical issue with telling a patient there is no hope for them. Many of us are extremely educated about our disease, but as you say, it’s incredibly complex and each patient is different. It requires a huge amount of tenacity on the part of both the patient and physician. All I ask is for a partnership: for a patient to have the agency to disagree with a physician without the fear of being “fired” as a patient, and without the fear of misleading notes in our patient files. We don’t expect miracles but a partnership would be fair. I completely agree that a multidisciplinary approach is necessary, especially given the high rate of comorbid conditions which often exacerbate the complexity of treatment. I truly hope we can get there some day — it is my mission.