I don’t get sick like normal people. This time of year, everybody has colds, flu, pneumonia, bronchitis—an entire smorgasbord of upper respiratory illnesses.

But not me. No sir. This January, I’m doing my time with cluster headaches.

For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure, let me set the stage. Whether you suffer from them or not, everybody in the world is convinced that the very worst headache is the dreaded migraine. Migraine sufferers perpetuate this myth. They talk of laying down in dark, soundless rooms. Their children and pets bound and gagged and left in the garage. Significant others, too.

They down Tylenol 3 and fantasize about it being Vicodin.

I know their pain—I too am a sufferer of the migraine. When I lived overseas, I once had one that lasted nine days, and I even took opium to try and quell the incessant agony. I tell that story to illustrate that I understand your pain.

I wish you’d do me the same courtesy.

But the fact that you brought up the subject of migraines in the first place tells me that you won’t.

I forgive your ignorance. The road of the cluster headache is one I hope you never travel. Because if the thought of a migraine fills you with unspeakable dread, the cluster headache would be like the entire NFL tap dancing behind your eyes to speed metal wearing golf shoes—the kind with the hard spikes that aren’t even allowed on golf courses anymore.

For you nature buffs who are as ignorant as I am about sports, I have an analogy for you as well. Picture a migraine—the nine-day variety—that you are having in a small room filled to bursting with loud inquisitive children who’ve been fed Easter candy, then shaken up in a big bag. Got the image? Hearing the incessant why? Why? Why?

Good.

That’s an acorn.

The cluster headache is a mighty oak. It was old when your great, great, great grandfather was a pup.

Suffice it to say they are uncomfortable.

And the treatment… Pills don’t work. Strong drugs only take the edge off—so it’s like being stabbed behind the eyes with a dull knife. With a spoon.

There are only two things that help. Oxygen. Pure oxygen. I have a pressurized tank of the stuff in my living room that’s almost as tall as I am. Basically, when the headaches strike, you have to sit wearing a mask and breathing in the oxygen until you don’t feel like you want to tear your own eyes out anymore.

The catch … of course there’s a catch … you have to be uncontested for it to work. Otherwise, you’re pumping your precious oxygen into a wall of mucous. It can’t reach your brain, which is where it needs to go. Did I mention that one of the side effects of a cluster headache is concrete-like congestion? Only the most painful nasal sprays work.

Luckily, there is a second treatment. It’s the biggest EpiPen known to man. Astronauts have orbited the earth in smaller needles.

So the next time somebody whines about having a headache, log them into this blog and sing this little song:

Migraine, schmigraine.

Go away.

You’re wimps. The lot of you.

And get someone to sing the harmony … otherwise it just sounds mean and insensitive.