Try the nortryptaline.It helped me.I am just very,very sensitive to meds and cannot stay on it.
For me,I will do one more year of this crap and then it is check out time for me if nothing gets better.I never wanted to be on this medical roulette wheel where you never know what they will do and what experience they have to even determine that…
Best of luck.
Whew! Thanks for clearing that up egoiste, I was afraid a dermatology doc had treated your TN!
I have found that surgeons, regardless of the speciality, always want to cut first and ask questions later (if at all). I’m very leery of people who want to drill holes in my head! Although in ancient Greece drilling holes in your head in an attempt to relieve migraine pressure was a legit treatment and I have had migraines horrible enough that I could see how you could be convinced to try it…
That said there are so many good medication protocols out there now I tell everyone they should fail all other options, and it should be an epic fail, before even entertaining the idea of someone messing around with the nerves in your head.
You should def give nortripiline a try. I really liked trileptal and lamictal, too.
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I’m kind of new to participating on here, so I don’t know what the general feeling about surgeries are. do people prefer to stay on meds the rest of their lives rather than have a hole in their skull? I have been taking so many pills for a few years now, the fact that I have to do it every day just doesn’t phase me. I’ve already been on antihistimines for decades, so what’s 18 more pills a day to me? but if there’s even a small chance an MVD would help, and since I’ve been feeling like I wish I could just die, then why not try it?
My first question would be how old are you? Because this all gets worse over time. And the surgical options don’t seem to hold, assuming they work at all they tend to gradually fail over the following decade(decade being the long side of it) and have to be repeated. it’s definitely a catch 22.
My TN group says to chose a surgeon who has a track record of excellent results.I think there are some good videos on line.But definitely go for the one with the best results.
I have a root canaled tooth that feels like it is the source for a lot of my TN pain but the dentist always says it looks fine. So ready to just get it taken out.
Kate, the first thing you might want to do is to have your tooth looked at by a very good endodontist–they specialize in root canals. Many dentists won’t even do root canals as they really are tricky and need specialized equipment. It is very easy for a dentist to miss part of the nerve or botch up the canal somehow, and that can cause issues. A re-treatment of the RC could solve the problem. If there is nothing obvious, you might also ask about having a CBT scan of the area, as it is amazing what can be seen with that. Removing the tooth, as many of us have found, rarely cures the problem if it truly is neuropathy pain, and if you can keep your original tooth it is much preferable–replacing the tooth would involve either a bridge or implant, and those can be problematic also.
I’ve been to an endodontest and had the root canal redone. Didn’t help.
Thank you so much @samirish for sharing and posting about the contact point headache, it really seems like it can be this condition who is causing some of my pain. I Will talk to my dr.
I have had TN for seven years. Six years ago I had MVD surgery. Nine days later my pain was back. A year later I had gamma knife done. It worked really well for about four and a half years. When it came back last year (not near as bad as the beginning) I had a nerve injection. So far it has worked! I also take 200 mg of Carbamazepine every day.
Hi! I saw your post about how steroids work for you. My pain was mostly I. My teeth, face and head. I would get flare ups that would last for days and no ATN medication helped. I was also told I could not take steroids long term but I proved to my doctors that if I could stop my pain with a few steroids without adverse issues they finally approved. At the start of a flare up I would take 10 ml, then 5 ml 4 times a day for 2 or three days….then lower dose next day. The pain would be gone and I did not need to take a full medrol dose pack because I caught it early.
I then started a diary of everything……environment, what I was doing, eating ect. A pattern came into focuse. If I talked with my head turned, had my head turned at dentist or massage with my face in a face cradle my pain would start within a few hours.
I finally found a doctor who diagnosed me with Eagle Syndrome a rare rouge bone pressed into my trigeminal nerve with certain movements causing sever inflammation in my trigeminal nerve. This is not a normal symptom of Eagles. Eagles is seen in a panoramic X-ray but diagnosed with a ct of the neck without contrast. It is so rare it is had to find doctors to know about it. If you want to learn more you can join an eagles group and read old posts to learn more.
I had the bone removed and my pain decreased tremendously….it took some time and work to relax my muscles in my face but I have not had a flare up in years. Also I found that just the tight muscles in my face would squeeze my trigeminal nerve causing pain so I did successfully use muscle relaxants to help when I felt tight ness.
Keep looking for solutions and ideas……
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