This is a long-overdue follow up on my MVD surgery 10 years ago. June 25, 2010 and now it is only a month to my anniversary. 10 years have moved me officially into the ranks of being a senior citizen, and I have slowed down some. I still get a few tinges of TN pain a day but nothing as intense as what I got when my case was at it’s worst.
At other times, I have trouble sleeping, but I don’t know if this is related to the TN medications or just a factor of my advancing years. In any case, I am no longer trying to work “regular” jobs. I still do consulting work, but choose my customers and only work on things I am interested in. This lets me work my own schedule most of the time, so I can work as early or late any day I want to.
I also have gotten into house-flipping. The physical work is rewarding for me, and I do most of the work myself. I only use help when the work is too heavy for one person or requires a high ladder. I do have a roll-around scaffold that I can set up when I need to do high-level work for longer periods like when repairing ceiling plaster or painting up high. The reason I have to stay away from heights is that I have developed vertigo and other balance issues since the MVD procedure. An ear nose and throat specialist and a specialist in dizziness have reviewed my case and both agree that the dizziness was caused by damage to the eighth cranial nerve either before my MVD surgery or during the actual surgery. (The trigeminal nerve is the fifth nerve, but they are only a few millimeters away from each other.)
Still, I would gladly have some dizziness instead of the intense and debilitating pains I had before the surgery. While I might only get seriously dizzy once a month, I don’t want to do it when I am in a position where I might fall. I came to this realization after falling one day when finishing work on a bungalow (putting in a light bulb in a ceiling fixture of all things) and I wound up messing up my rotator cup and dislocating my shoulder. This has all healed now, but it was probably the second most painful things I have had happen. Unlike the TN, there were no pauses in the pain, and the shoulder pain was constant.
House flipping had filled my needs to do something other than sit around, lets me work whenever I want to, and still make money for the time I spent on the job. (One reason this works is that I buy homes outright, and this way I don’t pay interest but only insurance, property taxes, and utilities.) Most of the flip shows on TV involve a large, high interest-rate loan, and every additional week the job takes winds up costing the budget big time.
My medications have been Gabapentin and Baclofen. It took a few years to get everything working in the medication line, and Lamotrigen has been a final component since about the second year.
I take the dog for a 3 to 5-mile walk every day the weather permits on a dedicated bikeway and so social distancing is a lot easier than it might be other places. So far, I have been able to stay at home, in my car, or at a house I am working on and none have had any human visitors since early February, so there probably are not as many virus spores in these places than there are in the rest of the town. Food and medicines I pick up or have shipped, so again there is less chance of contamination.
I hope everyone is doing well. If you know someone with a confirmed case of Coronavirus (Covid-19) it would be interesting if you post about their experiences – good or bad. The scientist still are trying to figure out more about this condition, and any information that we share here might help them to understand Covid-19 better. If there are unique symptoms or if a particular medication seemed to help, let us know here so the data will be available to others doing Covid-19 research.