Migraine

My neruo has mention about running some test on me later this month. When I ask about what test would be done. He said MRI,testing for sleep on the weekend and EKG, X-ray's . Just a full work up of things. He said look for things like tumors,lesion,kidney stones. . .ok I still have lot of migraines but the meds are working.

Is this standard for neruo to do this? Should I be concerned bout so many test? I feel fine except a few bumps in the road. I've told him this. So what gives? Why now?


Dutchess

Dutchess,

You have what appears to be a neuro who just wants to make sure there is not another underlying problem contributing to your migraines.

There are many people who suffer from migraines who find they have sleep problems. If those sleep issues are correct, it can have a very positive impact your migraines.

Well, some doctors like to run all kinds of tests right away in order to rule out anything else that might be causing issues besides migraine. Migraine diagnosis is often done by excluding other possibilities. That's because there isn't a test that can be run that has results that scream migraine. There's no definitive lab test or lab result for migraine. So...if the symptoms fit, and labs and tests rule out anything else, then it's diagnosed to be migraine, most likely.

That said, some doctors don't like to test for everything under the sun right out of the gate. Sometimes it's because they don't want to order tests that are more than likely to just come back clean, as they often do in migraine. If the symptoms are pretty cut and dried in support of migraine, you might get a diagnosis without tests, because the doctor seeing you doesn't want you to get stuck paying for tons of tests that say you're "fine".

Another time that doctors might order tests like this down the road from the original diagnosis is if they're having a hard time treating someone, like if someone is not responding to things tried. Tests at such a time can help to either confirm the initial diagnosis, or can help find things that might be interfering, or underlying problems that may not have been caught with earlier screenings. For example, when you first saw the doctor, and described your symptoms, you might not have mentioned sleep patterns. If later on the doctor thinks maybe you're having sleep issues, and thinks it might be contributing to your migraine status and your struggle to regain control, then a sleep study might help pin things down and give some idea of direction to go in.

I guess I did have a lot of these test ran before and they were negetive. I just didn't understand why they are being ran again. In my mind it's a waste of time if they prove the same. At the same time the neruo wants to be sure, right?

I thought the meds is all I need until the migraine went away. Isn't that the plan for all who have migraines? Or am I wrong. Did I learn the wrong idea posting and reading here? Where am I going wrong in thinking that way? I just want to be well again.

Dutchess