A new headache clinic in a Canadian downtown quaternary neurological center aimed at supporting clinicians in the community was opened in March 2017. As a means to help appreciate a patient’s unique experience of pain, an initially therapeutic history-taking tool has blossomed into a visual tool to advocate, educate, and communicate their headache experience. Over a 10-month period, we asked 375 patients the question, what is the one word you use to describe your headache pain or experience? From this question, we derived 171 unique words with many recurring word themes showing shared experience (table). These words were recorded in this illustration with increasing font size to represent the frequency of each word (figure). Fun fact—paying homage to the brain, particular words are intentionally placed near the control centers!
Top 21 words and their frequency
Font size starts at font 8 increasing by next standard font size with each recorded use word. Final image was made using Omnigraffle.
Author contributions
J. Robblee: Study concept, study design, acquisition of data, data entry, creation of figure, and critical revision of manuscript. S. Kelly: Study design, acquisition of data, data entry, manuscript and writing.
Study funding
No targeted funding reported.
Disclosure
The authors report no disclosures. Full disclosure form information provided by the authors is available with the full text of this article at Neurology.org/cp.
Footnotes
Funding information and disclosures are provided at the end of the article. Full disclosure form information provided by the authors is available with the full text of this article at Neurology.org/cp.
- Received April 24, 2018.
- Accepted June 8, 2018.
- © 2019 American Academy of Neurology
The Nerve!: Rapid online correspondence
- Reader response: Headache: Illustrating the patient experience
NOTE: All contributors' disclosures must be entered and current in our database before comments can be posted. Enter and update disclosures at http://submit.cp.neurology.org. Exception: replies to comments concerning an article you originally authored do not require updated disclosures.
- Stay timely. Submit only on articles published within the last 8 weeks.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- 200 words maximum.
- 5 references maximum. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- 5 authors maximum. Exception: replies can include all original authors of the article.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.