Could Your Terrible Headache Be a Subarachnoid Hemorrhage?

By James Morosky, DC

Could Your Terrible Headache Be a Subarachnoid Hemorrhage?Sometimes a headache is just a headache. And sometimes a headache is a sign of something much more serious, like a subarachnoid hemorrhage.

A subarachnoid hemorrhage is when there’s bleeding between the brain and a thin membrane that surrounds the brain. It’s typically caused by head trauma, an aneurysm, blood thinning medications, or high blood pressure.

I see patients every day that complain of headache pain. But occasionally, a patient will come to me with what they describe as the “worst headache ever” and say it’s “unlike any other type of headache pain” they’ve experienced. If the patient tells me that the headache started suddenly (perhaps after a popping or snapping feeling in the head), is worse near the back of the head (at the base of the skull, in the suboccipital area), and that they had a loss of consciousness or I see a lack of alertness, I immediately become concerned that it’s a subarachnoid hemorrhage.

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Filed Under: Brain Health

Patient-Centered Interviews Are a Must

By James Morosky, DC

Patient-Centered Interviews Are a MustSomething that’s been on my mind lately is the importance of a patient-centered interview. There are some essentials that a doctor needs for the interview:

  • Knowledge, or at least knowing where to research answers
  • Performing a smart physical examination
  • Problem-solving skills (putting the history and exam findings together)
  • Effective communication

As it was drilled through my head in school (and the more experience I have, the more I see this to be true) – if you can’t communicate, it doesn’t matter what you know. Communication is the keystone of the patient consultation, and with doctors performing hundreds of thousands of consultations in their lifetime, it’s pretty important to nail down.

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Filed Under: The Medical Community

The Importance of Being an Advocate for Your Own Health

By James Morosky, DC

The Importance of a Being an Advocate for Your Own HealthI want to share a story about something that someone I know went through, in order to drive home something I feel very strongly about – being your own greatest advocate when it comes to your health.

Allow me to give you a basic background of this story.

For a little more than a year, this man had been suffering from severe abdominal cramps. The doctor wasn’t sure what was wrong, but wanted to put him through a pancreas test. The pain he was going through wasn’t every day, from what I remember, and the intermittent pain was his only symptom then. He dealt with the excruciating pain off and on. I’ve had some bad cramps a few times in my life and, once in a while, they were enough to affect my sleep. However, mine were probably nothing compared to the pain he had gone through.

What befuddles me is that for the year that this was happening, and after seeing his doctor a few times, there was no real intervention in his diet or work life (he typically worked the afternoon/night shift during this phase of life) to help treat his problem. These would be the things I would focus on, since what we eat has a huge affect on our GI system (and everything else).

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Filed Under: Patient Advocacy