Expert: Dina Q Goldin, Ph.D. - 3/23/2009

Question
I had AN removed back in 2003 and ever since until now, (March 2009), I've been experiencing headaches.  First few months were the worst, I've basically lived with headaches when I was awake but frequency of attacks diminished to nowadays one or two hard attacks in a week.  During those hard attacks, I cannot do anything but to lay my head down on the desk and take tyrenols, wait for it to go away.  I've been taking headache pills ever since.  Before the surgery I'd have a headache like once in two months or so.  Wondering if there's a way to fix this or as all doctors would say, time is the only solution.

Also, due to the surgery, I've lost my hearing on one side of my ear.

Answer
Headaches are common after AN surgery; so is deafness in that ear. To deal with headaches, I recommend to check the headache page of the Acoustic Neuroma Patient Archive:
http://www.anarchive.org/headache_ptrs.htm

There are many ideas there, and different things work for different patients -- you just have to keep trying.