When patients go to a doctor with reports of pain, fatigue, weakness, or other symptoms associated with a neurologic disorder, they may think, "You have no idea what I'm going through." But occasionally, physicians do know what their patients are going through—because they have the same neurologic disorder.

Exact statistics are hard to come by, but some surveys suggest the odds are higher for certain neurologic conditions. For instance, a 2016 survey published in the journal Headache found that many headache specialists—86 percent of whom are neurologists—have some form of headache or migraine. Seventy percent of respondents had a personal history of episodic migraine, 14 percent had chronic migraine, 2 percent had episodic cluster headaches, and 4 percent had experienced headaches associated with post-concussion syndrome.

The researchers say there are several reasons why many headache specialists have a significantly higher prevalence of episodic migraine compared with the general population. Neurologists may recognize the symptoms and self-diagnose more often. They may choose to become headache specialists because they experience migraines, or work stress may increase their risk for migraine.

To find out how having the same diagnosis affects the care they give and receive, we spoke with these doctors and their patients.

Brien Smith, MD, FAAN

Dr. Smith is co-chair of clinical neurosciences at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI.

DIAGNOSIS: Epilepsy, in high school.

DISEASE HISTORY: During his medical residency, Dr. Smith took antiseizure medication but continued to have breakthrough seizures. In 1993, he had surgery to remove a benign tumor in his left temporal lobe, which eliminated his seizures.

HOW IT HAS CHANGED HIS CARE: "I know what different types of seizures feel like," he says. "Seizures can come in all sizes and shapes, with a wide spectrum of feelings and symptoms. A lot of [doctors] try to empathize and understand, but it's very hard to do if you've never experienced one yourself. Because I have had seizures, I am more familiar with the challenges patients face."

BEST EXAMPLE: Recently, Dr. Smith treated a hockey player in his early twenties who had a seizure on the ice. During the examination, the athlete reported having had a total of four seizures in his life. When Dr. Smith probed more deeply, the hockey player said he often had "funny feelings" that started in his stomach and rose up into his chest, lasting 20 to 30 seconds each; this had happened before his big seizure, too. It turned out that these were little seizures and that "this had been going on for years—yet no one had identified them as seizures." The hockey player was having focal seizures that don't alter consciousness, Dr. Smith explains. The trouble is, little seizures can lead to a big one. Dr. Smith changed the athlete's medication regimen. Since then, the hockey player has had only a couple of focal seizures and no big ones.

Annie Brewster, MD

Dr. Brewster is an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital and founder and executive director of Health Story Collaborative, a nonprofit online community that's dedicated to giving patients the power to connect and share their stories of illness and healing with other patients and families.

DIAGNOSIS: Multiple sclerosis, in medical residency.

DISEASE HISTORY: "I didn't really acknowledge the diagnosis. I was living in denial for five years." After her second flare-up, she began taking medications to manage her symptoms and slow progression of the disease.

HOW IT HAS CHANGED HER CARE: "I think it has made me a better doctor. I've learned that people need time to absorb a diagnosis of a chronic or life-changing condition," she says. "I'm better at accepting patients where they are."

BEST EXAMPLE: Dr. Brewster treated a young woman who had been diagnosed with MS in her early 20s. The patient worried that her life was ruined, that she wouldn't be able to have a career or a family. "Sharing my diagnosis gave her a window of hope," Dr. Brewster recalls. "Here I am practicing medicine and I have four kids. I think she was relieved to have a sense of possibility in her life."

Anjan Chatterjee, MD, MPH, FAAN

Dr. Chatterjee is a board-certified neurologist and psychiatrist in New York.

DIAGNOSIS: Migraine, at age 4.

DISEASE HISTORY: "For most of my life, I've seen the way migraines can negatively impact someone. I watched my father, grandmother, and aunts deal with the pain—and soon after, I started to experience them myself."

HOW IT HAS CHANGED HIS CARE: "When I was treating patients, I knew exactly how they felt from the very first visit with them. I also understood how their migraines affected their personal and professional lives."

BEST EXAMPLE: Dr. Chatterjee says he's particularly sensitive to his patients' possible migraine triggers, such as barometric pressure changes. "I saw one young lady in the ED [emergency department] after she showed up with complaints of a pounding headache after scuba diving," he recalls. "I was able to put her mind to rest about how it came about."

Maria De Leon, MD

A retired neurologist in Nacogdoches, TX, Dr. De Leon is author of Parkinson's Diva: A Woman's Guide to Parkinson's Disease (thewordverve, 2015) and a research advocate for the Parkinson's Disease Foundation.

DIAGNOSIS: Parkinson's disease, 10 years ago.

DISEASE HISTORY: After years of caring for patients with Parkinson's disease, Dr. De Leon began noticing she had the same symptoms she saw in her patients—stiffness, slowness, and gait problems. She also experienced pain and visual problems as well as depression and anxiety.

HOW IT HAS CHANGED HER CARE: Once she started sharing her diagnosis with her patients, she says she felt closer to them and more sympathetic. "I could foresee problems and symptoms better than I could before," she says. She also began focusing on her patients' caregivers, a role she knows well after caring for her grandmother, who also had Parkinson's disease.

Best example: While treating a 60-year-old patient who was taking care of an older parent with end-stage Parkinson's disease, Dr. De Leon recognized the look of frustration on the woman's face. "I remember sitting down and saying, 'It looks like you need someone to talk to—what's going on?'" she recalls. When the woman said her mother didn't recognize her anymore and was belligerent, Dr. De Leon told her she'd had a similar experience with her grandmother. "We talked about how [some people with late-stage Parkinson's disease] are unaware of what they're saying and how important it is not to take it personally. That was really helpful to her." Mark Clark, a former patient of the retired neurologist, says he benefited enormously from having a doctor who also had Parkinson's disease. "We could compare symptoms and we understood each other completely. Talking about it helps me cope with it," says Clark, now 64, a retired electrical contractor who has difficulties with balance and tremors. "She was a weathervane—she helped predict what was going to happen in the future; I appreciated that."

A Patient's Perspective

Knowing her doctor also had trigeminal neuralgia gave Lorna Johnson hope.

In the fall of 2015, Lorna Johnson began experiencing excruciating bursts of pain in her lower jaw and teeth on the right side of her face. Neither her primary care physician nor her endodontist, who had given her a root canal five months earlier, could find a cause. "The pain felt like torture, like a probe was suddenly zapping me in my teeth and lower jaw," says Johnson, 72, a retired director of a nonprofit organization that provides primary health care to low-income, uninsured adults in Laramie, WY. "The sharp jabs of pain would come out of nowhere, and there was nothing I could do about it." When a CT scan didn't reveal a cause, Johnson went to see a neurologist in Fort Collins, CO, 70 miles away. Her diagnosis: trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic pain condition that affects the trigeminal nerve, which carries sensations from the face to the brain.

"I was a basket case when I went to see the neurologist. I said, I can't live like this!" recalls Johnson. "The doctor said, 'I suffer from this myself.' He said it can happen out of the blue and it can disappear as quickly as it came. Having someone understand this rare condition, well, it was like a light bulb of hope went on. I would tell him what I was experiencing and I'd get a knowing nod, not just, 'I hear you,' but, 'I know what you're experiencing.' I felt as though we were on the same page immediately." The neurologist described various treatments for pain, and after some trial and error and fine-tuning of dosages, they found a protocol that works for her, with minimal side effects. Her neurologist happens to take the same drug.

Diagnosis Downside

Neurologists who share a disorder with their patients may be more sensitive and attuned to their patients' needs, but they also may have more practical difficulties. For one thing, they may get fatigued more rapidly or become a bit less patient when their symptoms flare up. "There's irritability or anxiety with pain—that's just a fact of the brain being hypersensitive," says Seth Stoller, MD, a neurologist and director of the headache center at Atlantic Neuroscience Institute in Summit, NJ, who has migraines. In some cases, the pain from a migraine can be debilitating as well. That was true for Anjan Chatterjee, MD, MPH, FAAN, a neurologist and psychiatrist in New York, who has had migraines since childhood. "I could not see patients when I was experiencing a migraine," he says. "I needed to be alone in a dark, quiet room waiting for my pain to subside."

Other doctors had to change their career trajectories because of their diagnoses. That was the reality for Brien Smith, MD, FAAN, co-chair of clinical neurosciences at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI, who was diagnosed with epilepsy in high school. His condition was controlled by medication, but he still experienced an occasional breakthrough seizure. He did fine during surgical rotations in medical school, but he realized that a breakthrough seizure during surgery would put the patient at risk. So he became a neurologist specializing in epilepsy, and does not perform surgery.

Before she closed her medical practice, Maria De Leon, MD, a neurologist in Nacogdoches, TX, who has Parkinson's disease, was experiencing tremors, mostly in her feet, and a burning, searing pain in her legs. It would take her longer to do things and she'd get tired more easily. "When I did a motor exam, I couldn't open and close my hand or tap my fingers like I used to; I couldn't show patients how to do a gait test because I would lose balance and become unsteady," she recalls. "I was staggering just like they were, and I was having trouble writing. Doctors are supposed to have bad writing, but toward the end, my handwriting got so bad that my nurse would have to write the prescriptions and I would just sign them."

For some doctors, medications used to control symptoms may pose a problem, especially if the drugs compromise their ability to think clearly or function well while seeing patients. Doctors may choose to take lower doses of a medication or try a different remedy to avoid cognition-compromising side effects; sometimes they may need to force themselves to be stoic and power through their schedule, even if they don't feel their best.

"Usually when I have a migraine I just fight my way through the day—I don't tell patients I have one," says Dr. Stoller. "I'm slower with the work flow; I get home an hour or two later. But I'm able to persevere to make sure I'm taking care of my patients—that's my job!"