This review is by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

The most frightening thing about Paula Kamen's "All in My Head" (Da Capo, $25) is that what happened to her could happen to any one of us. While putting in a contact lens one day, she was suddenly stricken with a horrible pain, worse than any headache she'd ever had. More than 10 years later, she still suffers from that very same headache.

For those of us lucky enough to never suffer from chronic pain, that alone is almost impossible to believe. For those of us with somewhat blind faith in America's medical profession, her story since that day is a frightening maze of medications tried and discarded, doctors consulted, nontraditional remedies investigated and more. Acupuncture, massage, Botox ó nothing worked. One New Agey chiropractor puts a burlap sack that supposedly was used in the delivery of a Peruvian baby on Kamen's stomach ó how that was supposed to help her headache is anyone's guess. Kamen has moments when the pain is lessened, but it never truly goes away. What do you do when nothing makes you feel better?

Kamen's personal story, and her quest for relief, is fascinating. Unfortunately, she fills out the book with long dissertation-type sidebars, as if turning a personal memoir into the ultimate book on chronic pain. I would have liked to just stay with Kamen's own story, which is told so vividly that at one point I dreaded picking up the book, convinced that just reading about her headache would somehow transfer it to my own head.

óGael Fashingbauer Cooper