MIGRAINE: It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of diseases.

I tell ya, I don’t get no respect.

I get two migraines a week. I use about 16 pills a month. The other day, my insurance company called me and said, “Rodney, from now on we’re only allowing 4 pills per month.” I said, “I need 16.” They said, “Cut them in quarters.” I tell ya, I don’t get no respect.

Unfortunately, United Healthcare’s newly proposed policy of limiting migraine medications to four pills a month is no laughing matter. Put yourself in the place of a migraine sufferer.

Migraine is a real disease with distinct phases:

Prodrome consists of fatigue, neck pain, hunger, thirst, and other physical symptoms that occur up to 24 hours before the headache.

Aura occurs up to 60 minutes before the headache and produces a sensation of seeing sparkling lights or feeling numbness or tingling in the face and hand.

Headache, lasting as long as 72 hours, consists of severe throbbing pain similar to that associated with meningitis. This pain is often associated with nausea, vomiting, light and sound sensitivity.

Postdrome consists of fatigue, neck pain and lethargy that lasts 24 to 48 hours after the headache.

Imagine having one or two of these episodes per week. Now imagine there’s medication that has revolutionized the treatment of migraine — medication capable of eliminating all of the symptoms within two hours, often in as little as 15 to 30 minutes.

Now suppose you can only treat half of your headaches. The other half you will have to suffer — usually for 24 to 48 hours — because your health-insurance company wants to ration how much medication you can have.

I’ve been treating migraine patients for 20 years. I have two separate board certifications in headache management. I am one of only 32 Fellows of the American Headache Society in the country. I see more migraine patients than any other physician in New England. I’ve seen health-care restrictions come and go, but this new United Healthcare policy is the last straw.

According to the American Headache Society, one in four households harbors a migraine sufferer. Migraine disability and symptoms produce lower quality of life scores than those in patients with heart disease and even cancer. Research published in the April Nature Neuroscience suggests that migraine causes damage to the brain similar to stroke.

So if migraine is so common and disabling, why does it get no respect and why should we care? Imagine the outcry if insurance companies began limiting the number of pills for other diseases:

Hello, Mr. Smith, I’m sorry but we’re limiting your insulin to 40 units per day. But I take 100 units. Sorry. Click.

Hello, Mr. Jones? I’m sorry but we are limiting your chemotherapy. We can only give you one quarter of what your doctor prescribed. Sorry. Click.

So why doesn’t migraine get the same respect other diseases get? Because “it’s only a headache.” Ask a migraine sufferer if it’s only a headache.

Ask yourself what you would do if your wife, or husband, or child were curled up in pain and vomiting, for no other reason than the insurance company simply won’t let them to have an adequate monthly amount of medication — the standard of care for all other diseases. I know what I would do and I’m doing it.

I’m writing this letter asking readers to please e-mail your reactions to United’s policy to info@neurohealth.info (please include the city where you live) so that I can be well-equipped to let our legislators and the health-insurance companies know that a migraine sufferer deserves the same respect given to any other patient; that we won’t stand still and be discriminated against and made to suffer needlessly; that we won’t let migraine set the precedent for medication rationing for profit.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am very fond of movie lines. Well, here’s one:

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. Neither should you.

Gary A. L’Europa, M.D., is a Warwick-based physician.