I haven’t been here since it was the old site, and have had a lot going on, ear pain and otherwise in life.
The neurologist I had been seeing kept insisting I had atypical facial pain. The dx just didn’t sit right with me, but since he was prescribing appropriately, whatever the actual cause (I had done my research!) I figured I wouldn’t rock the boat, since getting tagged as a doctor shopper can make getting taken seriously harder.
However, my faith in him was truly eroded last year when he BS’d me (and I knew he was doing it) but he still prescribed, so I bit my tongue. Lyrica did help a fair bit - until it didn’t. (Same old story!)
Last winter, things got worse - well, more like back to my previous normal before I had started on Lyrica. I thought I would tough out the winter and see if spring improved matters.
In that interim, though, I saw a shoulder doc for shoulder pain that turned out to be stemmed from my neck. Ended up with a neurosurgeon who ultimately did a cervical fusion.
While I was recovering, my ear pain started kicking up a few more notches, and I called the neurologist. He upped my dose of Lyrica, but after a month, that still hadn’t helped. I decided at what would have been my final post-op appointment with the ns, to ask for a second opinion.
He immediately thought glossopharyngeal, asked a few questions, and sent me off for another MRI. (Last one had been 2 years prior, and was normal.)
He had some different images taken, though, not the same as the last one, and it did, indeed, show a vessel playing footsie with the nerve. (okay, so that isn’t how he said it. He said it was irritating it. Same thing, right? 
)
He bumped the Lyrica up another 100 mg, and - nada. Then he took a more extensive history (I have a weird ear pain history from infancy), and decided I should see an ENT before we consider surgery. ENT said he didn’t see anything that would account for my pain (primarily ear, though I get some throat pain, too), so now I am scheduled for an MVD on August 11.
Fingers crossed!
(And if anyone has any experience with MVD, particularly MVD for GPN, feel free to pipe in!)