Latest news with #headache
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
I found myself Googling: can brain cancer cause hiccups? How I fell into a hypochondriac rabbit hole
Throughout my adolescence and into my mid-20s, I spent a lot of time trying to understand my body. I was unwell, that much was certain. The question of exactly what was wrong with me was one to which I applied myself studiously. I had theories, of course. Looking back, these tended to change quite frequently, and yet the fear was always the same: in short, that I was dying, that I had some dreadful and no doubt painful disease that, for all my worrying, I had carelessly allowed to reach the point at which it had become incurable. This started at university, when I developed a headache that didn't go away. The pain wasn't severe, but it was constant – accompanied by a strange feeling of belatedness that told me it had already been going on for some time. How long, exactly, I couldn't say – weeks, definitely. Maybe it had been years. After about a month, I visited the doctor. She had an earnest, warbling, confident way of speaking, which, in spite of her evident commitment to the tenets of mainstream medicine, gave her the air of an alternative healer. She explained that what I was experiencing were tension headaches, a common ailment among students, and during exam season practically universal. I said that I didn't feel very tense. The doctor asked whether the pain felt like a tightness across both sides of the head. A kind of squeezing? Like an elastic band being pulled tight? Like a fist clenching around your skull? I said that it did not feel like these things. Yes, she said, nodding meaningfully. Every person experiences tension differently. The doctor asked me what medication I'd been using to manage the pain. I was thrown by this question; the thought had not occurred to me. This was, in many ways, quite surprising, since I consider my tolerance of pain to be less developed than the average. In the case of this headache, however, my attitude was edging closer to that of Franz Kafka. A century earlier, the writer told his fiancee, Felice Bauer, that he never took aspirin because doing so, he said, created 'a sense of artificiality' far worse than any 'natural affliction'. As Kafka explained to Bauer, if you had a headache, you had to undergo the experience of pain and treat it as a sign, before examining your entire life, right down to its most minute detail, 'so as to understand where the origins of your headaches are hidden'. The idea of taking painkillers struck me as irresponsible, even reckless, like disconnecting the fire alarm because it has interrupted your sleep. Like Kafka, I wanted to understand the headache. I wanted to know what it meant. The doctor told me to come back in a few weeks if things hadn't got better, sooner if they got worse. I left the practice holding a bottle of aspirin, which I promptly deposited in the bin. In the months that followed, I began using Google to research what was wrong with me. The thinking here was not unreasonable: I wanted to know what was causing the headache, so it made sense to go searching for information. The problem was that these online searches often produce a sense of disproportion: the list of 10 things that cause headaches might fail to mention that certain items account for the vast majority of cases, while others vanishingly few. And for those of us looking for trouble, our eyes tend to pass over the more prosaic – and plausible – explanations (eyestrain, dehydration or indeed tension). Only the worst will satisfy us. As the critic and Nobel laureate Elias Canetti once wrote, hypochondria is a form of angst that 'seeks names and finds them'. Predictably, I arrived at the conclusion that I had a brain tumour – an interpretation for which my Googling provided abundant evidence. As I trawled through lists of symptoms, more and more aspects of experience came to fall under my conscious scrutiny. Soon I was noticing lots of other little anomalies. I became forgetful; words kept escaping me. At the same time, I seemed to be walking around in a continual state of deja vu. I developed a twitch in my left eye. One pupil became slightly larger than the other, and coffee started tasting weird and metallic. I developed a mild but persistent case of the hiccups; just one, two, maybe three solitary little hiccups each day. 'Can hiccups be caused by brain cancer?' I asked Google. Yes, it answered – if it is advanced. Sometime later I started to smell things that didn't seem to have any external source. Burning, usually. Other times an astringent, chemical smell. One morning I woke up and my nostrils were filled with the indescribable scent of the villa in Spain where as a child I spent my long, dull, lovely summers. My eyesight, which had always been perfect, began to flare at the edges, as though there were always something flickering just outside my field of vision. I would turn suddenly, trying to catch it, at which point it would cease, recommencing as soon as I turned back around. I started keeping a list of all these things as they arose, on a loose sheet of paper headed 'symptoms'. Reading back over that list, it seemed to resemble the descriptions of illnesses that I browsed online. The doctor, however, took a different view – and the greater my fear that I was seriously unwell, the more she became convinced that my headache was being caused by 'tension'. In her recent book The Invisible Kingdom, Meghan O'Rourke writes about suffering from an undiagnosed autoimmune illness, an experience she describes as 'living at the edge of medical knowledge'. She writes: 'What really terrified me was the conviction that … I would never have partners in my search for answers – and treatments. How could I get better if no one thought I was sick?' O'Rourke is pointing out that diagnosis starts with a conversation between a patient and their doctor. There are important questions here about privilege: about who is and isn't deemed to be a reliable narrator of their own experience. Studies have shown that women are less likely to be believed by their doctors than men, and black women are less likely to be believed than white women. But, for everyone, conversations with the doctor are constrained by the need to appear credible – and if you are hoping to get a referral for medical testing, this might mean being careful to avoid seeming too anxious. In a desire to economise on my trips to the doctor, I would sometimes seek alternative paths to diagnosis. On several occasions, I visited the optician, because I knew they would use an ophthalmoscope to examine my optic nerve, which, I had learned online, might be inflamed due to the increased pressure inside my skull if I did have a tumour. (In the end, this did result in a diagnosis – one that, come to think of it, was rather apt: myopia.) On the occasions when I did visit the doctor, I was always very careful to limit what I said, not wishing to appear like one of those 'knowledgable' patients, a hypochondriac, who turns up requesting a second opinion on a diagnosis that they themselves have made. 'The position of hypochondria is still suspended in darkness,' declared Sigmund Freud in 1909. His colleagues wanted to make a publication celebrating the achievements of their new science, but Freud was cool, arguing they would have to be honest about what he called 'the limits of our knowledge'. For millennia, hypochondria has confounded patients and doctors alike. It first appears in the writings of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and then in those of the Roman physician Galen. According to these accounts, hypochondria was a subspecies of melancholy, which was caused by an excess of one of the four humours, black bile. This meant it was a physical disease, seated in the abdomen, though it could cause an array of mental symptoms such as fear and sorrow. This view remained more or less unchallenged for many centuries. Then, in the 18th century – with the waning authority of humoral medicine – hypochondria was redescribed as a nervous illness with a set of symptoms that spanned mind and body. It was often considered to be a peculiarly male disease: a counterpart to the hysteria that was said to affect women. Having long been considered a 'scholar's disease', it became a fashionable ailment among an urban literati, with eminent sufferers including Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. During this period, several books such as Samuel-Auguste Tissot's An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Literary and Sedentary Persons (1768) warned of the consequences of reckless and excessive reading. This trend accelerated in the 19th century with the emergence of a genre of popular medical manuals. A Victorian physician was expressing the view of his profession when he decried the spread of 'pernicious books of 'popular medicine'', adding that there is 'no doubt that the reading of this kind of literature has often resulted in an attack of hypochondriasis'. As more and more people were reading about health and sickness, hypochondria settled into its current meaning: a fear of illness that is also a form of illness. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion By the time I came to worry about my health, attention had been turned towards the internet, with some doctors speaking about the rise of a worrying new scourge: 'cyberchondria'. And for anyone who fears they may be suffering from this disorder, Dr Google promises to step in to help: '5 Ways to Tell If You Have Cyberchondria' (Psychology Today); '15 Signs You're a Cyberchondriac' (Yahoo). (One sign is 'you assume that the first result is the most plausible explanation'; another is 'you trust the internet more than your doctor'.) At the heart of hypochondria is the fact that it's impossible to really know what's going on inside your body. A person can 'feel well … but he can never know that he is healthy', Immanuel Kant wrote in 1798. Today, medical websites, with their lists of the seemingly innocuous 'warning signs' of serious illness, have grown into multimillion-dollar businesses by publicising this potential gap between reality and perception – between how well you might feel, and how sick you might be. More than a year after the headache started, I was referred to a neurologist. The referral was made reluctantly, with a mixture of sympathy and contempt. The neurologist sent me for an MRI. A few weeks later a letter arrived. In its entirety, it read: 'Dear Mr Rees, your brain is reported as normal.' Over time the other symptoms started to disappear. But that was not the end of things. Up late one night, I found myself looking into error rates within radiology. Across all areas, it's about 3-5%. This was not that bad, I thought. Then I Googled the number of annual radiology scans in the UK; that year it was about 40m. If 4% of those were wrong, this amounted to 1.6m incorrect scans – a number, I reasoned, that was certainly large enough to include me. In a study of those diagnosed with a lung carcinoma, the lesion could retrospectively be found in 90% of 'negative' scans. After a brief, ecstatic period of reprieve, my fears came back. At some point I forgot my headaches and directed my attention towards the lymph nodes in my neck, which I nervously fingered as though they were rosary beads. Once again, I was sure there was something seriously wrong with me – and, as I sought to get to the bottom of things, I found myself trapped in the same cycle of recovery and relapse. If hypochondria is a need to know, then no test is likely to offer a definitive cure. Ultimately, one has to learn to make peace with uncertainty. Perhaps this is what Freud meant when he said that hypochondria exposes the limits of our knowledge. Not simply a gap that could be filled with new information, but a more categorical deficiency: the failure of knowledge to ever bring about the states of health and happiness or even certainty we desire. I'm not really sure how I came to stop worrying so much about my health. After nearly a decade of anxiety, in my mid-20s I simply ceased to give it much thought. It is probably fair to say I've overcorrected. A couple of years ago, when I woke up in a state of extreme allergic response (shortness of breath, dizziness, eyes swollen shut), I took a hay fever tablet and tried go to work. Luckily, my partner convinced me to go to A&E, where I was immediately given a shot of steroids. The poet Anne Boyer has written about what she calls 'reverse hypochondria', and I suppose I have joined these ranks. I think writing about hypochondria helped. Reading about the fears of others – writers such as Kafka, Marcel Proust with his extreme sensitivity, and Alice James with her wavering and debilitating symptoms – was strangely comforting and helped to keep my own fears under control. Besides, researching and writing a book is a sort of apprenticeship in uncertainty: finishing it required me to give up my fantasies of fully understanding the topic. The NHS's standard treatment for health anxiety consists of cognitive behavioural therapy. Some people report being helped by CBT, but it's never really interested me. By the time I started psychoanalysis at the age of 30, my fears had been more or less put to rest. But I think it would have been helpful back at the height of my hypochondria. One thing I enjoy about conversations with my analyst is how they generally make me less certain about my version of events – the way they loosen me, in an undramatic and indefinitive way, from my attachment to my own narratives. And so I can't help but feel this would have been good then, back when I only had one story to tell: the story of my illness. Hypochondria by Will Rees is out now, published by Coach House Books at £12.99. To order a copy, go to Delivery charges may apply.
Medscape
5 days ago
- General
- Medscape
Fast Five Quiz: Acute Management for Migraine
Migraine is a complex disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of headache often associated with visual or sensory symptoms, collectively known as an aura, that usually arise before the head pain but that might occur during or afterward. Further, migraine has a strong genetic component. Additionally, a variety of environmental and behavioral factors might precipitate migraine attacks in individuals with a predisposition to migraine. Acute management of migraine headache should provide rapid relief from headache pain and related symptoms, restore patient functioning, and prevent recurrence. What do you know about acute management for migraine? Check your knowledge with this quick quiz. Acute medications for migraine include triptans, ergotamine derivatives, gepants, and certain serotonin 5-HT1F receptor agonists, although nonspecific drugs such as NSAIDs can be used as well. A recent systematic review and network meta-analysis found that triptans have the best safety profiles and efficacy for treating migraine when compared with other drugs such as certain serotonin 5-HT1F receptor agonists, gepants, and NSAIDs. Featured head-to-head comparisons found that the triptans were the most efficacious for pain freedom at 2 hours. However, the same meta-analysis noted that cost effectiveness and cardiovascular risk should also be considered before use, as 'cerebrovascular events may present primarily as migraine-like headaches, and misdiagnosis of transient ischemic attack and minor stroke as migraine is not rare.' Learn more about triptans for migraine. For acute treatment of migraine, the American Headache Society (AHS) recommends administering medical therapy as soon as symptoms appear; more specifically, researchers note that within 30 minutes is preferable, according to a recent review. Other sources suggest utilizing therapy within 15 minutes for those who experience migraine with aura. This time frame is generally more effective for management rather than specifically waiting for aura phase to complete or when pain reaches moderate intensity. However, even if a patient is unable to take medication within that time frame, taking medication during the episode can reduce symptom severity and migraine duration. A recent meta-analysis also explored the difference in efficacy between different acute medications for migraine, which can be found here. Learn more about acute treatments for migraine. The AHS encourages the use of validated measures of migraine treatment response to guide management decisions. Specifically, they suggest mTOQ for assessing acute treatment, as well as the Migraine Assessment of Current Therapy (Migraine-ACT), Patient Perception of Migraine Questionnaire (PPMQ-R), Functional Impairment Scale (FIS). In the same guidelines, the AHS suggests PGIC, MFIQ, or MSQ v2.1 as valid instruments for measuring response to preventative migraine treatment. Learn more about migraine severity measures. REN is approved for use by the FDA for both prophylactic and acute treatment of migraine in adults and pediatric patients ages 8 years and older. For migraine prevention and treatment, eTNS and TENS are approved only for adults, and eCOT-NS is approved only for acute treatment in adults with migraine. Of the approved devices, eTNS, REN, and noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS) are specifically mentioned by the AHS for use alone or in conjunction with pharmacotherapy, and single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (sTMS) can also be used as monotherapy for preventive treatment. Further, nVNS and sTMS can be used in both patients 12-17 years and adults. Learn more about the acute management for migraine. Before a patient can initiate acute treatment for migraine with gepants, ditans, or neuromodulatory devices, the AHS recommends trialing at least two oral triptans. Treatment failure can be assessed by validated patient-reported outcome questionnaires (mTOQ, Migraine-ACT, PPMQ-R, FIS, PGIC) or clinician attestation. Risk factors for an inadequate response to triptan include severe baseline headache severity, nausea, depression, photophobia, and phonophobia. Further, triptans are contraindicated for patients with vascular diseases. CGRP inhibitors are usually not recommended as an initial acute treatment for migraine. Though caffeine can be used as an adjuvant to initial analgesics for migraine, it usually does not determine the initiation of gepants, ditans, or neuromodulatory devices. Inadequate response to combination therapy including NSAIDs, a recommended non-pharmacologic regimen, and CGRP inhibitors are not part of the criteria for initiating acute treatment with gepants, ditans, or neuromodulatory devices from the AHS. Learn more about acute treatments for migraine.
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
I'm a doctor - I'm begging you to come and see us if your headache involves one of these eight details
Everyone suffers headaches from time to time, and they are usually nothing to worry about. But a doctor has shared the eight warning signs that a headache could indicate something much more sinister—like a deadly brain bleed or cancer. In a viral TikTok video that has amassed more than 1.2 million views, Dr Ahmed, an A&E specialist, outlined the scenario in which you must 'come to see me quickly'. The first symptom he lists is a 'thunderclap headache', which he described as 'the worst headache of your life.' 'If you have or wake up with one, that's an emergency—it could be a brain bleed. Come to me quickly,' he said. Thunderclap headaches are sudden, agonising pains that feel like being hit in the head, resulting in 'a blinding pain unlike anything experienced before', according to the NHS. This is considered a medical emergency, and the health service advises sufferers to call 999 or get to a local A&E as soon as possible. A sudden headache of this type may be a sign of a burst blood vessel in the brain, which can result in lifelong disability, coma and even death, experts say. A brain bleed is the most frequent cause of a thunderclap headache, which is usually the result of a bulge in the blood vessel bursting, according to Dr Ahmed. The next worrying symptom he outlined was stroke-like symptoms. Though a stroke is often painless, some do experience a headache alongside it and so the symptoms should not be ignored. This includes weakness on one side of the body, drooping of the face, vision loss, hearing loss, confusion and sudden loss of speech. Written in the caption of the video, Dr Ahmed said this could be an ischemic stroke, which occurs when a blockage cuts off the blood supply to the brain. Patients should also watch out for headaches that come alongside fever and neck pain. This, Dr Ahmed said, is a common symptom of encephalitis—a serious condition where the brain becomes inflamed. It can be caused by an infection like meningitis and lead to confusion and deadly seizures. Profusely vomiting is another warning sign, 'especially after you've had a head injury', the doctor warned. This could indicate a major bleed, medically known as hemorrhage, which can lead to deadly strokes and life-long brain damage. His fifth red flag was a headache that comes with any eye pain and/or vision loss. 'This can be an acute angle closure glaucoma. Come to me, I will send you to a specialist,' Dr Ahmed said. The condition, which affects two per cent of over-40s, is usually caused by fluid slowly building up in the front part of the eye, which increases pressure inside it. As a result, the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain, becomes damaged. Another red flag is if the headache occurs in a pregnant woman, 'especially in the second trimester'. Dr Ahmed explained this could be the deadly condition pre-eclampsia, in which rocketing blood pressure triggers a host of complications for both mother and baby. The most effective treatment is an early delivery; usually via C-section, but if left untreated it can trigger stroke, seizures and organ damage in the mother, and slow growth in the baby. Dr Ahmed said: 'Pre-eclampsia is still quite common, the headaches can quickly lead to confusion, agitation and seizures as the mums brain swells. Urgent treatment is required.' The seventh warning sign to look out for is if the headache is worse when you're bending forward or coughing. He said: 'Bending forward and coughing cause very mild increases in pressure in the head, but if there is too much fluid in the brain, those simple actions cause worsening of pain. 'These [headaches] need urgent treatment as the damage they cause is slow, but very permanent.' Too much fluid and pressure in the brain can damage critical structures and restrict blood flow. This can lead to headaches, vision changes, and in severe cases, even brain damage or death. Concluding the video, his final point was that people should be wary of a headache that won't go away. @gamingdocmbbs He said: 'If a headache hasn't gone for a long time, every day you have one and it just keeps getting worse and nothing is treating it, even though it's a mild headache, we want to see you. Maybe not A&E, but someone needs to see you. 'Any headache that lasts weeks without improvement is a red flag sign and needs assessment. it might be stress, a migraine, tension or cancer.' The persistent ailment may occur because a cancerous tumour leads to increased pressure in the skull, particularly as it grows larger, according to The Brain Tumour Charity. Some 12,000 people are diagnosed each year with a brain tumour, including 500 children and young people. In the UK, over 10 million people experience headaches regularly. Tension headaches are the most frequent type, affecting 41 per cent of Britons. Additionally, 33 per cent of the population have experienced migraines in the past month, a 2023 study by Pfizer found.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
I Ended Up In The ER During A Vacation In Spain. Here's What Shocked Me The Most.
My family had just arrived at a seaside village on the east coast of Spain, where I was sitting on a white sand beach looking out at the implausibly blue water. The scene was straight out of a Mediterranean daydream, and yet I was panicking. My head was throbbing and had been since I'd slammed it into the bottom of a metal hotel safe a few days earlier. The pain and pressure had been keeping me up at night, along with the anxiety that came from Googling my symptoms. I'd tried every kind of medication I could find, but nothing could ease the pounding in my skull. After returning to our Airbnb, my husband urged me to make a telehealth appointment through our international health insurance. (As an American family living in France for the year, we were required to purchase this as part of our visa application.) A few minutes later, I described my symptoms to a Spanish doctor via chat using Google Translate. Hearing how long the pain had persisted, he advised me to see a doctor to rule out a brain injury. I frantically researched doctor's offices nearby, but the remote region had limited options, and I wasn't even sure how or where to secure an appointment. So, instead, we decided to go to the nearest emergency room. Leaving our son with his grandparents, my husband drove us to a small city about 35 minutes inland. As we pulled into the hospital's parking deck and then walked toward the front desk, I was struck by how similar it looked to hospitals in the U.S. My husband, thankfully fluent in Spanish, took the lead as we checked in, but the receptionist switched to English when she realized that I didn't speak Spanish. The receptionist asked for proof of our public healthcare coverage, but I explained that I have private international travel healthcare coverage — essentially expat insurance. She apologized, explaining that I would have to pay out of pocket for the ER visit and then request reimbursement from our insurance company since I hadn't secured prior approval for the hospital visit. I braced myself, thinking back to past experiences in American hospitals: The ER visit for chest pains that came with a $2,500 surprise bill a few months later. The breast biopsy, where I was forced to pay nearly $3,000 for the privilege of finding out whether or not the lump in my breast was cancerous. Of course, all of these charges were on top of the $12,000 insurance premium my family paid annually. Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long to find out what we'd be paying. The receptionist explained that there was a 200€ flat fee for ER visits, pointing to a poster beside her desk that listed the hospital's costs in clear detail. She noted that if I needed additional tests or procedures, the total could increase. I released the breath I'd been holding, handing over my passport as insurance I would pay at the end of my visit. I released the breath I'd been holding, handing over my passport as insurance that I would pay at the end of my visit. Inside the hospital, things progressed as expected. We sat in a sterile room in uncomfortable plastic chairs with dozens of other uncomfortable-looking people. I briefly spoke with a hospital worker (in English), who assessed the severity of my situation and added me to the queue. I waited close to two hours before my name was called, and a young doctor led me into a room that looked like every American hospital room I'd ever been in — besides the fact that the posters on the wall were in Catalan. He took my vitals, asked about my symptoms (in English, with a bit of translating from my husband for clarity), and said he was going to order a CT scan just to be safe. We waited another hour for the scan, which was conducted using an ultra-modern machine by two efficient female techs. Shortly afterward, the doctor returned to share my results: No brain damage. He suspected that my headaches were being exacerbated by the anxiety and tension I had developed as a result of the injury, and he handed me a prescription for a common Spanish painkiller. He instructed me to return if my symptoms worsened or didn't clear up. Checking out at the front desk, I braced myself for the grand total, knowing from bitter experience that a CT scan can cost thousands of dollars in the U.S. I was pleasantly surprised when the receptionist told me that the final tally for my ER visit was 729€. After I paid, she handed me a disc with a copy of my CT scan for my records. She also gave me the documentation I needed to provide to my insurance company for reimbursement. Walking back to our car, I was overwhelmed with relief — both that I didn't have a brain injury and that we didn't have to pay thousands of dollars to confirm that I was going to be OK. Although an unexpected 729€ bill is indeed a hardship for most people (myself included!), I was comforted by knowing that it would be reimbursed and that it wasn't as much as it could have been back in the States. I also felt sad and frustrated thinking about the extreme shortcomings of our healthcare system in the U.S. — how even a basic doctor's visit comes with the worry of not knowing how much you'll have to pay to get the care you need. Far too often, Americans must choose between prioritizing their health or financial stability. The cost of an emergency room visit can vary greatly depending on the location; the average bill can easily be over $2,000 without insurance. Even with insurance, the numbers can be astronomical for the average American family. If critical care is required or surgery is performed, those costs could skyrocket to $20,000 or more. It's no surprise, then, that recent polls found that 40% of Americans carry some healthcare debt, despite more than 90% of the U.S. population having health insurance. If you, like me, are an American with hospital bill-related anxiety, it's a good idea to do some research on your destination before traveling abroad. Find out what type of facilities are available at your destination, if travel insurance is recommended there, and how to contact emergency services should the need arise. Additionally, Johns Hopkins Medicine advises that you know your blood type before you go abroad, carry documentation of any pre-existing conditions and medications, and fill out the information card in your passport with details like your address and phone number. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting in touch with the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate for help locating medical services, as well as enrolling in the Department of State's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) before going abroad. Consuls can also help you transfer funds from loved ones back home if you need them to pay for medical services. You can also check out the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers' directory of healthcare professionals around the world. Accidents and emergencies can happen anywhere, anytime, and you should always have a game plan ready to go. And whatever you do, don't delay care if you suspect the problem is serious. The outcome could be catastrophic. I Moved To France With My Son, And This Is One Culture Shock I Never Expected 5 Sneaky Signs Your Doctor Is Gaslighting You What Doctors Look For When Finding Their Own Doctor
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Hull consultant thought royal garden party invite was a joke
A headache specialist who has dedicated his career to supporting people in Hull thought his royal garden party invite was a Fayyaz Ahmed, a consultant neurologist based at Hull Royal Infirmary, attended the traditional celebration at Buckingham Palace on shook hands with the Prince of Wales, who was hosting the gathering on behalf of his father, the King."I was utterly astonished and wondered what I had I done to deserve such an honour from the King," Prof Ahmed said. Prof Ahmed said he did not believe his daughter when she told him he had received a letter from Buckingham Palace."I thought she was joking until she placed the envelope in front of me, stamped with the official seal of the palace," he said."The first thought that crossed my mind was that maybe I had made a mistake or one of my patients, who has royal connections, had lodged a complaint against me and the order was to revoke my British citizenship." 'Major honour' Also an honorary advisor with the British Association for the Study of Headache and a senior lecturer with Hull York Medical School, Prof Ahmed has spent decades advancing headache and migraine research and his career to championing Hull in the medical sector, he has organised and hosted the national meeting on headache in the city since 2005. Prof Ahmed described attending the ceremony as a "major honour" and said there was an "impressive sense of order, respect and discipline" at the event. "After becoming a professor in 2020, I had already fulfilled all the aspirations of my professional life, so receiving this invitation was beyond anything I had ever imagined," he said."The palace staff were extremely polite, sincere, and friendly. They treated every guest with great respect and courtesy."Around 8,000 guests enjoyed sandwiches, cream cakes and pastries in the sunshine, enjoying two hours of entertainment, music and food before the national anthem marked the end to the ceremony. Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
