Hi Everyone :)
I'd like peoples thoughts on the pain I'm having at the moment, please if that's okay? .
A brief history: I had my first majorly severe episode of TN back in Feb 2014. The most horrendous, traumatizing pain I have ever felt for over 12 hours which ended in A&E where the Dr gave me Carbamazapine (which was such a blessed relief!) and diagnosed TN. For the past year I have had smaller episodes of sharp pains in the right side of my face, jaw and cheek bone, which I have managed quite well without needing to take the pills (I only stayed on them for about a month) and the pains haven't been too regular, luckily.
Shooting forward to Jan 2015, I was on holiday and experienced terrible sharp stabbing pains in my forehead that hit me all day long, every day for the last 15 days (not a headache). When I got home from holiday I went straight to my Dr. By now I was quite stressed with the relentless pains and she found my BP was 180/100. She re tested me a week later (still with the awful head pains) and found the same high blood pressure so decided to put me on 10mg a day of Lisinopril. She thought the head pains were caused by the high BP originally but although my BP went down the sharp stabbing pains in my head didn't.
Fast forward to today, Day 45!! and I'm still in the same dreadful state with the head pains. From the moment I wake up to when I go to sleep, one after the other every few seconds to maybe every few minutes. My Dr says it's definitely the TN but I'm not sure, as can an episode of TN go on for this long? She advised I go back on the carbamazipine which I have done but I'm only taking 200mg a day as anymore than that and I can't function, they dull the pain for a while but it creeps back during the day.
Last week I went back to my Dr and requested she put me in touch with a neurologist so that I can get a MRI scan which I'm now awaiting a letter for.
I find them hard to describe but my symptoms are these.. About 5 inches above my left eye brow (an inch or two past my hairline) I am getting awful sharp stabbing pains, like i have a screw driver or sometimes a large needle stabbing into my head, its not a deep pain, just below my skin maybe, always in the same place, though recently I have felt it a few inches back from that point as well but not at the same time. I'm also experiencing sharp pressure pain in my left temple along with totally numb skin from level with my cheek bone over the temple up to my forehead and frequent sharp pains radiating from the temple to an inch above my left eyebrow plus to bug me even more, an annoying visible twitch that's appeared today under the skin on my left cheek bone! I can't wash my hair or brush it at the moment and just the rain and wind we are having here at the moment causes the pain to flair up :(
Does that sound like TN? I can't compare it to my Feb 2014 pain as that was a severe electric shock like zap that lasted for a minute or two every quarter of an hour or so over 12 hours and other than like wise lesser zaps over the past year, I have had nothing else like this before.
I'm still feeling quite down about it all at the moment and haven't really got anyone I can speak to about it, my family are all getting quite bored of me saying 'ouch my head!' they've not said but I can tell ;)
Hope I haven't bored anyone here too much and apologies for such a long post but thanks for reading if you got this far!
Best wishes,
Debby.