Headaches in Children

[DeloresAmelia]

Hi, looking for some advice, my son says the back of his head sometimes gets sore when he turns his head. He said it months ago then twice in the last week. Says it only lasts a second and is a dull pain. He also says it’s happened his whole life. He is 7 and has been through a lot, 2 years ago he had a limp and we where told it was cancer but thankfully it turned out it was caused by trauma to the bone. And things at home have been really unstable in the past year.

I’m scared that if I take him to the doctors they’ll send us for an mri or brain scan, he spent the last year and a half getting mri scans and X-rays, we cant go back to that! He’s had to operations in the one year.

I keep freaking out that he will become seriously ill and I don’t know how we would deal with it!

Does anyone have any experience of headaches in kids like this?

Anyone?

We'll move this over to children's health for you now, OP.

Thank you

Okay, there isn't enough info on that to tell what's going on. But most children seen by the GP for headache are not referred onto paediatrics. Most of the children seen by paediatricians for headache don't need a head scan. And of the tiny minority that do, it's only a tiny proportion where they find anything worrying.

The main thing they'll need to do is ask a lot more questions about the headaches, and examine him. Unfortunately, you really can't take a decent history over the internet, or check out ears, and lymph nodes, and eyes etc, so even if you could know whether to trust any of us, we're not going to be able to diagnose him on here. Go to see the GP. If they're not sure, they'll refer onwards. If they're confident they are no red flags, they may well not need to. But if you're worried enough to be freaking out, then it's worth getting this sorted out.

And yes, whilst very occasionally headache on its own, with no other features, can be a sign of something serious, it's incredibly unusual. Usually headache on its own turns out just to be one of the many forms of headache.