Robert Cowan, M.D.

Headache Specialist

I am an unapologetic child of the sixties, having grown up near Pasadena, California. Pasadena was an amazing place in which to grow up. It is one of the most architecturally diverse communities in the country, and early on, I became fascinated with building and design. The smart money had me becoming an architect or similar. However, never one to take the expected or obvious way, I elected to take my undergraduate degree in Philosophy at Clark University in Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter, I became interested in architecture of a different kind – the architecture of the brain. Eventually, I obtained my M.D. from University of Southern California, School of Medicine and went on to teach in the department of Neurology, eventually becoming Chief of the Headache Section.

It would be great to say that I had wanted to be a headache specialist all my life, but, not so. Until the last ten years or so, headache was a footnote in most medical students’ education. Even I, as a migraine sufferer, was focusing on what is known as cognitive neurology (Alzheimer’s disease and similar). In the early 90’s the first triptans came on the market and suddenly there was money available to study new drugs. That caused academic neurology to take notice of headache. There was no formal training of headache specialists. The sad truth is that I became the “headache guy” at USC simply because I had headaches. My chairman figured “I could relate.” It was the best thing that ever happened to me. As miserable as I am when I get a migraine, studying headache and taking care of my fellow sufferers has been the greatest professional accomplishment of my life.

While there was much to enjoy in Los Angeles, and academic medicine had its’ points, both required a lot of time and energy. In 2000, (age 50 – midlife crisis?) I decided to slow down a bit, spend more time with my family, write the great American novel, lose some weight, hit some tennis balls and build some really nice furniture. I left the University and moved to Sedona, Arizona. I continued to collaborate with my long-time friend and colleague Michael Harrington, M.D., exploring the pathophysiology of headache through measurement of protein and other changes in the spinal fluid. We were fortunate enough to obtain a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for this work. Beyond that, it was straight-ahead patient care for me.

One of the extraordinary things that happened when I left the university was that a number of my headache patients actually followed me to Arizona! While this was personally very flattering, it got me to thinking about all the headache sufferers around the country (and world) that do not have access to a headache specialist and cannot afford to fly to a headache center. Thus was born the concept of the Virtual Headache Clinic. Building this site over the last several years, identifying the needs of headache sufferers and figuring out the best way to deliver products and services to these patients, and overcoming the legal and financial barriers to such a site, has been tremendously satisfying.

I finished my novel, I still get to hit tennis balls, play in my furniture shop, and actually provide hands-on care at the Keeler Center for the Study of Headache in Ojai, California. But the creation of the Virtual Headache Clinic and Migralogue, in particular, has been the highlight of the last few years.