Raw video: Dr. Blake talks about the procedure

HOUSTON —This time last year, cleaning other people’s homes would have left Erica Knight-Muck drained.

“It just runs straight to my head so I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this,” said Knight-Muck.

Cleaning is what she does for a living, but chronic headaches left her in a constant fog of pain.

Knight-Muck said over-the-counter medicines hardly put a dent in her suffering.

“It wasn’t a migraine, but it felt that way,” said Knight-Muck. “I was taking 12 to 16 Goody powders a day just to help.”

Then she met Dr. Pamela Blake.

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She’s a neurologist who brought a new procedure to Houston last year.

Dr. Blake said Knight-Muck had occipital neuralgia.

That means her headaches were caused by a nerve being compressed.

“This is tissue right on top of the nerve,” said Dr. Blake.

It sits at the base of Knight-Muck’s head, near a muscle. When part of that muscle is removed, the nerve was decompressed and the pain went away.

That gave Knight-Muck much better results than steroid injection shots – another treatment available for the condition.

Now there’s nothing dragging Erica down. Her 6-year-old has even noticed a difference.

“He looked at Dr. Blake and said ‘thank you for giving me my mommy back,’” said Knight-Muck. “I’m not griping at my husband so much so he’s really glad I got the surgery.”

With the pain pushed to the past, Knight-Muck feels like a new woman.

Dr. Pamela Blake is at the Headache Center of Northwest.

The number there is (713) 426-3337.