New Migraine Study: You Probably Don't Have One

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a Migraine.

If your hand is in the air right now, I feel bad for you for two reasons:

1) I was being figurative. Don’t raise your hand like an idiot just because Internet told you to.But I really feel for you because,
2) You are one of the millions of Americans who suffers through the agony and torture that is a Migraine.

Be honest, if you are a Migraine victim like me, don’t you get a little riled up when folks start throwing the term Migraine around too loosely?

“Ooooh! I have a headache that is a bit more uncomfortable than usual. I must have a Migraine.”

Oh, really? Are you nauseous? Have you lost most, if not all, of your vision? Do you want to crawl into a tiny crack in the universe and rot there for eternity? Does your head feel like the bomb-mask Arnold Schwarzenegger wore in Total Recall as it was peeling from his face?

No, you narcissistic, self-diagnosing attention-whore, you have what we call a “mild to imagined headache.” Take an Advil and stop being such a drama queen.

While we are on the subject, that tickle in your throat is likely just some overnight dust buildup. Change the air filter to your home ventilation system and stop speculating you might have Strep.

In a time of unprecedented advances in medical technology, we have become weak. Self-diagnosis and worse, over-diagnosis, has become our crutch. It is our ticket to attention and sympathy from others to fill our empty void or boost our self esteem.

Our primitive ancestors are rolling in their shallow, unmarked graves. They would be sick, actual sick, to hear the things we have invented and passed off as legitimate illnesses preventing us from work, school, activities and general human interaction.

As a nation, we waste billions of dollars in healthcare expenses. Soon our elected officials face a vote that could change the scope of government involvement in the treatment of all these made up ailments.

My politically neutral question is, if we are willing to pay so much money now to go to a doctor every time we have the sniffles or a pretend Migraine…what will happen when we don’t even have to pay for the treatment of any of these new diseases we convince ourselves victims of?