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My sister used to have a church friend (Wendy) who was also a family friend. I use past tense because she has passed away some years back. She had had migraine since she's quite young. She had always been told, it's normal since alot of women have it and suffer from it. We all thought it's normal.
A few decades back, my dad suffered from back pain. Occupational hazard, for his line of work. Some acquaintance recommended a doctor in a coastal city in China for treatment. He dutifully bought his own medicine, syringe and all the supplies, and went with my mom to that hospital where this doctor practiced. See, this was before Deng Xiaoping opened the door of China to the outside world, and this hospital was really a rather backward-looking building with no clean supplies. They practice mostly Chinese medicine treatment, and there was very little equipment for diagnosis, like those you would find in modern hospitals in the western world.
Part of the reason why my dad went to China for treatment was that, he had pretty much exhausted all options in modern medicine. He tried therapy; he tried medication, most of which had only provided temporary short-term alleviation, if at all. Eventually, the doctors told my dad that the only option left was to have a major surgery to correct a couple of disks in his lower back, which is a major and costly operation with no guarantee of success, and no guarantee that the issue would recur. The China trip was more like a last resort.
Quite miraculously, the non-invasive treatment (with no diagnosis done on dad whatsoever) worked for dad. The treatment consisted of mostly herbal medicine, and this procedure that uses a primitive suction cup type of glass device on the lower back multiple times a day. Within a few months, the lower back pain went away. It hasn't recurred since then, which has now been more than three decades now. Because of that, my dad has almost come to worship this doctor as some kind of god-like figure. He has since turned himself into a walking proof of the medical marvel that this doctor was capable of, and would recommend the doctor to anyone with any kind of ailment. You see, in Chinese medicine, there is no such thing as specialty - a chinese doctor would treat any ailment. My mom has come to resent the simplistic, single-focus view my dad has, of what this doctor was capable of doing. I would admit, I have my doubts too.
Fast forward a couple of decades. One time, when Wendy was visiting us, she casually mentioned about her migraine that had bothered her since childhood. My dad, being a rather simple innocent man that he is, leaped at the chance to recommend this doctor to Wendy. His enthusiasm was so infectious that she had decided to give it a try. One month into her new marriage, she flew to Hong Kong, bought her medical supplies, and flew to China to see this doctor. (Although China has since improved alot, clean medical supplies can still come up short.) She stayed for a few weeks of non-invasive treatment, got the rest of the herbal medicine supplies, and went back to Hong Kong for recuperation. The treatment, quite remarkably (and almost unremarkably at the same time), was exactly the same as the one that my dad had received a decade earlier, only that his ailment was back pain, and hers was serious migraine. No matter, it's all the same thing to Chinese doctors.
Less than two months into the regiment, Wendy was dead. She died in Hong Kong, in the arms of her husband of less than six months.
It turned out, the autopsy showed that her migraine that had bothered her since childhood had been a result of a benign brain tumor. It had been brewing all these years, but she never got it checked out. Afterall, everyone told her that most women had it, and it was not at all uncommon. She never took it seriously. As in the case of Bachmann and all the subsequent discussions on her "migraine problem," everyone just presumes that it's ok to just take preventive medication to stop the pain.
But of course, the pain is the one power mechanism in which our body tells us, there's something wrong inside our body, and we need to check it out. Wendy never did, apparently. The brain tumor grew, but the migraine had become so familiar to her that she just took it as a matter of course.
There has been saying, that tumor and cancerous cells need protein to feed on. Wendy ate and lived rather healthily, so the brain tumor just grew ever so slowly over time. Unfortunately for her, the herbal medicine from the chinese doctor was so nourishing to her body that it helped feed the brain tumor too. So nourishing, in fact, that the brain tumor was able to grow in a few short months to sufficient size to eventually kill her.
While the causal relationship of her untimely death, and the migraine treatment from the chinese doctor, was not fully established, it was pretty understood that the link between the two was just too strong to ignore. Although Wendy's family was sad, they did not feel bitter or grow hostile to my dad for his almost innocent suggestion on the god-like power of this chinese doctor. They understood it, that he meant to do good, with his well-meaning intentions. Regardless, my dad has felt the guilt to the extent that he never mentions or recommends his chinese doctor to anyone anymore from then on.
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Bachmann's episode and the attitude of the discussions toward her handling of her own migraine problem remind strongly of what happened to Wendy, before and since.
Is migraine really something that we (women, in particular) have to endure? Should we have pushed more for diagnosis, rather than just taking medication to suppress the symptom of pain? I believe, it's a yes and yes, to both questions.
I hope there won't be more repeats of another Wendy, of treatment without diagnosis, be the treatment simply pain-killer or some other form of treatment (invasive or otherwise).
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