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Bachmann's migraines are a phony issue
(CNN) -- First of all: Michele Bachmann will not be getting my vote for president.
But that is a political decision, not a medical one. Reading media reports that she suffers from a severe migraine condition, I feel for her.
As one of over 30 million Americans who gets migraines regularly, I suspect I'm not alone in feeling empathy here. Bachmann has the same problem, politically speaking, that millions of other "migraineurs" experience with their co-workers, bosses, and friends. If you've never had a migraine, you tend to assume that the blinding headaches and neurological disruptions mean that the migraineur is either very brave, or very fragile.
The truth is neither of these.
As the story of Bachmann's migraines unfolds, it is easy to see, through the prism of our politics, how migraine is viewed: It is almost like a scandal.
Her opponents search for veiled ways to score political points: Tim Pawlenty reminds an audience in Iowa that "All of the candidates ... are going to have to demonstrate they can do all of the job, all of the time" -- as if he never sleeps.
Political consultants like Karl Rove urge her to "get her doctors out there quickly" and beat the news cycle. Her brother reassures reporters that "she is not intellectually incapacitated." Her campaign releases a letter from the congressional physician downplaying the condition, noting that she knows her "trigger factors" and can "control" her headaches with "as-needed" drugs like sumatriptan, the reliable, prosaic Model T of migraine drugs.
And in the shortened news cycle, analysis also comes fast: Washington Post blogger Alexandra Petri argues that migraine, politically, might be "code" to remind voters that "Michele Bachmann is female" -- given that 75% of all migraineurs are women, not a bad theory.
In the end, though, it is no scandal. Because headaches are hard to diagnose, easy to fake, and long ago turned into a metaphor for irritation -- "you're giving me a headache" -- most Americans still don't know that "migraine" is simply a real illness, like asthma or epilepsy: a matter of neurons, serotonin (in some cases), environmental factors.
You can find it on a gene map. If you can get a migraineur into a MRI during an attack -- incredibly hard to do -- you'd see an image that looks like the brain is lit up like a Christmas tree. And you can usually control it, even if you can't exactly cure it.
And it is everywhere. Migraine is more prevalent than depression, osteoarthritis, and diabetes. Which means that you are almost certainly living with, or working alongside -- or considering voting for -- someone with migraine, and don't know it.
And in the end, too, it is no disqualification. There is no personality type for migraineurs: If you show me someone whose work seems hampered by headaches, I can show you someone who puts your productivity and mine to shame.
Never mind the list of migraineur writers, artists and musicians, which is a mile long, and runs from Sigmund Freud to Elvis Presley: everyone expects creative types to have "nervous" conditions.
But migraines have been no disqualification for political or military leadership, either.
Thomas Jefferson suffered from severe headaches for several weeks in April and May 1776. If the Continental Congress had recused him from duty, they would have missed what he did when the headaches stopped: write the Declaration of Independence.
Ulysses S. Grant suffered from headaches so severe during the Civil War that his officers offered him a special ambulance for travel (which he refused). But no one suggested that the headaches meant that the Union Army would be better off deprived of his leadership.
The world of sports, increasingly, gives us some of the most dramatic examples of what migraineurs can do. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Serena Williams both played through migraines. Troy Aikman quarterbacked the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories with a severe migraine condition. Terrell Davis of Denver Broncos had migraines so bad during Super Bowl XXXII that he had trouble seeing -- and still ran hard and fast enough to be named game MVP.
Athletes have to be extremely sharp and fit to perform. And pro sports coaches and general managers are notoriously practical: They need the best man or woman for the job.
It seems fair that we might consider using the same criteria for political leaders. If you think Michele Bachmann shouldn't be president, her migraines ought to be the least of your reasons why. And if you think she should, her migraines are no reason to reconsider your vote.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/21/levy.bachmann.migraines/index.html?npt=NP1
But that is a political decision, not a medical one. Reading media reports that she suffers from a severe migraine condition, I feel for her.
As one of over 30 million Americans who gets migraines regularly, I suspect I'm not alone in feeling empathy here. Bachmann has the same problem, politically speaking, that millions of other "migraineurs" experience with their co-workers, bosses, and friends. If you've never had a migraine, you tend to assume that the blinding headaches and neurological disruptions mean that the migraineur is either very brave, or very fragile.
The truth is neither of these.
As the story of Bachmann's migraines unfolds, it is easy to see, through the prism of our politics, how migraine is viewed: It is almost like a scandal.
Her opponents search for veiled ways to score political points: Tim Pawlenty reminds an audience in Iowa that "All of the candidates ... are going to have to demonstrate they can do all of the job, all of the time" -- as if he never sleeps.
Political consultants like Karl Rove urge her to "get her doctors out there quickly" and beat the news cycle. Her brother reassures reporters that "she is not intellectually incapacitated." Her campaign releases a letter from the congressional physician downplaying the condition, noting that she knows her "trigger factors" and can "control" her headaches with "as-needed" drugs like sumatriptan, the reliable, prosaic Model T of migraine drugs.
And in the shortened news cycle, analysis also comes fast: Washington Post blogger Alexandra Petri argues that migraine, politically, might be "code" to remind voters that "Michele Bachmann is female" -- given that 75% of all migraineurs are women, not a bad theory.
In the end, though, it is no scandal. Because headaches are hard to diagnose, easy to fake, and long ago turned into a metaphor for irritation -- "you're giving me a headache" -- most Americans still don't know that "migraine" is simply a real illness, like asthma or epilepsy: a matter of neurons, serotonin (in some cases), environmental factors.
You can find it on a gene map. If you can get a migraineur into a MRI during an attack -- incredibly hard to do -- you'd see an image that looks like the brain is lit up like a Christmas tree. And you can usually control it, even if you can't exactly cure it.
And it is everywhere. Migraine is more prevalent than depression, osteoarthritis, and diabetes. Which means that you are almost certainly living with, or working alongside -- or considering voting for -- someone with migraine, and don't know it.
And in the end, too, it is no disqualification. There is no personality type for migraineurs: If you show me someone whose work seems hampered by headaches, I can show you someone who puts your productivity and mine to shame.
Never mind the list of migraineur writers, artists and musicians, which is a mile long, and runs from Sigmund Freud to Elvis Presley: everyone expects creative types to have "nervous" conditions.
But migraines have been no disqualification for political or military leadership, either.
Thomas Jefferson suffered from severe headaches for several weeks in April and May 1776. If the Continental Congress had recused him from duty, they would have missed what he did when the headaches stopped: write the Declaration of Independence.
Ulysses S. Grant suffered from headaches so severe during the Civil War that his officers offered him a special ambulance for travel (which he refused). But no one suggested that the headaches meant that the Union Army would be better off deprived of his leadership.
The world of sports, increasingly, gives us some of the most dramatic examples of what migraineurs can do. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Serena Williams both played through migraines. Troy Aikman quarterbacked the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories with a severe migraine condition. Terrell Davis of Denver Broncos had migraines so bad during Super Bowl XXXII that he had trouble seeing -- and still ran hard and fast enough to be named game MVP.
Athletes have to be extremely sharp and fit to perform. And pro sports coaches and general managers are notoriously practical: They need the best man or woman for the job.
It seems fair that we might consider using the same criteria for political leaders. If you think Michele Bachmann shouldn't be president, her migraines ought to be the least of your reasons why. And if you think she should, her migraines are no reason to reconsider your vote.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/21/levy.bachmann.migraines/index.html?npt=NP1
It makes perfect sense to me to bring out Bachmann's migraines now. It gives more than enough time for people to become scared to cast a ballot for the woman. There will be a lot of this, and even the sharks within the republican party will focus on this tid bit eventually.
R Glass:
You rock, dude.
“Nanny Nanny Boo Boo Stick your Head in Poo Poo”...
That brought back a lot of fond childhood memories of my sister and & chasing each other around the house, preparing to hurl something disgusting at one another, only to be thwarted by our Mother, spanked, sent to our respective rooms, only to sneak out and throw it at each other anyway!
Neener-neener-neener!!!
I'm rubber, and you're glue. Whatever you say, bounces of me, and sticks to you!!!
Hell, where do you think my username (handle) derives from? Everyone's childhood anthem, of course.
Between us, I used to think that LMNO was a single letter. All the other letter were quite distinct, and individual, so I figured that LMNO was a single letter of the alphabet. It was an inside-joke between my sister and I growing up.
Yes... LMNO has been around a LONG, LONG, LONG time!!!
You rock, dude.
“Nanny Nanny Boo Boo Stick your Head in Poo Poo”...
That brought back a lot of fond childhood memories of my sister and & chasing each other around the house, preparing to hurl something disgusting at one another, only to be thwarted by our Mother, spanked, sent to our respective rooms, only to sneak out and throw it at each other anyway!
Neener-neener-neener!!!
I'm rubber, and you're glue. Whatever you say, bounces of me, and sticks to you!!!
Hell, where do you think my username (handle) derives from? Everyone's childhood anthem, of course.
Between us, I used to think that LMNO was a single letter. All the other letter were quite distinct, and individual, so I figured that LMNO was a single letter of the alphabet. It was an inside-joke between my sister and I growing up.
Yes... LMNO has been around a LONG, LONG, LONG time!!!
I used to get migraines so I can speak from experience. Mine as it turned out were linked to my cycles (hormone related). Once I got older and had my hysterectomy, amazingly no more headaches. But they are not like a regular headache that you can take meds for and it goes away after a bit. These get soooo bad you cannot stand the least little bit of light or noise. It is like someone is pounding a hammer inside your head and you get sick to your stomach and it hangs on for not hours, but days and I had one once that lasted for a solid week. There was no known cure or aid back when I had them, you simply endured and if they didnt go away after a couple of days, you could go to the ER and they would give you a strong pain reliever to give you some relief.
Some people get them so frequently that they are disabled by them and cannot work as the headaches interfere and keep them constantly absent, tardy or not fit to do a job. You cannot function with a migraine and anyone that says they can, does not have a migraine. You usually get a warning of an oncoming episode by seeing halo's or some other vision disturbance and sometimes if you take a medicine when the very first sign appears you might be able to ward off the worst of it, but not always.
So if someone is president and you got a very serious situation going on that the president is in charge of, yer toast. That pretty much sums it up. It is pretty normal to critique the health of one running for pres, just usually not this early in the game.
But seriously, if she gets that far, there is seriously something wrong with this country. Talk about the dumbing down of america. imo
Some people get them so frequently that they are disabled by them and cannot work as the headaches interfere and keep them constantly absent, tardy or not fit to do a job. You cannot function with a migraine and anyone that says they can, does not have a migraine. You usually get a warning of an oncoming episode by seeing halo's or some other vision disturbance and sometimes if you take a medicine when the very first sign appears you might be able to ward off the worst of it, but not always.
So if someone is president and you got a very serious situation going on that the president is in charge of, yer toast. That pretty much sums it up. It is pretty normal to critique the health of one running for pres, just usually not this early in the game.
But seriously, if she gets that far, there is seriously something wrong with this country. Talk about the dumbing down of america. imo
Both the Dems and the Repubs platform is going to be “I know you are but what am I”. Toward the end when it really gets nasty and the gloves come off, it will be “Nanny Nanny Boo Boo Stick your Head in Poo Poo”
Nope, haven't seen it for any of them. Lots of fighting, but no plan. It kinda all seems to be fluff to me. It's going to be very interesting to see who wins the Republican primary, and then of course the Presidential election. I think you might all find yourselves in the same boat I was in in the last Canadian election. It's not about who will do the best job, but who will do the least amount of damage. I made it all the way to the ballot box still unsure on who I should vote for. Wound up X'ing out my ballot (it was either that or voting for the Pirate Party) in protest. I hate it when people don't vote and then complain, but honestly could not bring myself to aide in putting any one of them in power. It's an awful position to be in.
"I still can't find an article as to what her economic plan is? Or her plan for job creation?"
If you can find a detailed plan from any of them, please send here to the U.S. we would like to know. All we are getting is bits and pieces of B.S. from all of them.
If you can find a detailed plan from any of them, please send here to the U.S. we would like to know. All we are getting is bits and pieces of B.S. from all of them.
I still think she is a flake, but I don't understand what they are saying in this article either. I can't figure out what migraines would have to do with her being President? Weird stuff gets raised during your guy's elections, I will say that. I still can't find an article as to what her economic plan is? Or her plan for job creation? I am however well versed on how she feels about abortion and gay rights. Now, I know I have no say in your election, but am curious as to why this doesn't concern all of you (I know it concerns some of you) - I am once again very confused. What are the priorities in this upcoming election? What in heck am I missing?
Doesnt matter, if she wins we will know our votes are bought and paid for imo
I'm not certain about the title of the article.
Sounds like the title is saying that it's a FAKE issue (phony), but the article itself speaks to the contrary.
Color me cornfrused!
*I'll vote for her... she's HAWT!
Sounds like the title is saying that it's a FAKE issue (phony), but the article itself speaks to the contrary.
Color me cornfrused!
*I'll vote for her... she's HAWT!
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