When I young, about 15 years ago, an eye doctor told me I had dry eye syndrome and I would not be able to wear contacts. She prescribed me some eye drops that my insurance didn’t cover, and I’ve been using over the counter eyedrops off and on since then. (But only when really bad! I hardly ever really thought about it.)
About a month before my TN attacks started, I started getting itchy eyes and eye pain and using drops all the time, but they didn’t seem to work and I had no medical guidance.
My TN Attacks started in December 2015, and they started in my teeth, mouth and cheek. In allergy season, my nose was getting stabbed. Later on, in the summer, it was my eyes and upper cheek. The meds kept (and keep!) going up and it seems my TN wants to stab me everywhere.
But I started getting a stab every few weeks, really hard, in my left eye – my TN is on my right. Doctors wanted to say it was idiopathic, and maybe I should be diagnosed with TN type II. Sometimes I’d get a stab on the right, and my left would just sting. But they both were getting eye stabs a lot lately, and I was getting more and more scared that my TN was taking over my whole face.
(Due to the leftside pain and an ambiguous MRI, one surgeon has rejected me for MVD surgery. )
Now it looks like those small “stabs” are common when it comes to severely dry eyes.
Now I’ve gone to a neuro opthomalagist, who diagnosed me (again) with dry eye syndrome as well as TN type I. I have been told to do 4 drops a day, for 4 weeks. My eyes are slowly calming down, and every morning I have to clean my eyes with a hypoallergenic cloth because overnight all this muck comes out of them.(I have not worn any makeup for over a year now, so it’s just the regular much) I haven’t had a stab in the left eye at all this week, just some stinging in both eyes which is relieved with the drops.
It seems that the stabs in my left side, which is TN-free (believe me, I’ve pressed it all over trying to get it to give me an attack - it was just the eye hurting, nothing else, ever!) were caused by dry eye. The eye stabs on the right may have been dry eye, too. I have only had a few small ones as of late.
I definitely still have TN. Instead of feeling pain in my eye, it’s seeming to go back to my mouth and cheek.
Here’s the thing: I went untreated for dry eye for pretty much forever. Dry eye syndrome is a real disease and the pain is triggered by light & wind. When you NOTICE dry eyes, it’s going to take weeks to treat them and get them back to healthy and you’re supposed to basically continue using eye drops forever.
I had repeatedly told my neuro that I felt light sensitive, which is NOT a symptom of TN.
So there may be things exacerbating your TN that you aren’t really aware of. My neuro was not an eye doctor, and he couldn’t have guessed I had one problem on top of my TN.
If you have pain specifically in your eye area when you get attacks, it’s considered more rare than the other branches.
Please go to a neuro opthamologist and get screened for dry eye and corneal inflammation. Neuros and doctors don’t think of it unless your first TN symptoms are in your eyes. But stabs in the eyes are actually pretty common for severe dry eye syndrome cases, according to the eye dr.
In my case, I have both, and the stabs in both eyes have slowed down, but I am still having breakthrough pain below the eye on my TN side.
If you get dry eyes, try investing in some prescription sunglasses (if you need glasses, if not, regular ones will do) and artificial tears. I was a bit scared and I flinched at first but I got the eye drops in and no attacks followed them.
and so nothing will surprise me if I get another diagnosis. Hopefully my primary care doctor feels she is competent enough to test for things, otherwise it’s another referral out and it’s hard to know which doctors are competent or not.
