I just joined yesterday. A little history. My adventure started in Summer of 2008. I started having a toothache near lower left 3rd molar(wisdom tooth). This tooth had always been angled so it pushed forward towards nearest neighbor. I never had my wisdom teeth extracted as a kid. I never had any issue with it. Now at 38 I was told that it was impacted and need to come out. Along with its upper match. I retrospect, I waited too long. It was six weeks between the Oral Surgeon seeing it and making the appointment. About half way through this I awoke in the night to much pain and an odd sensation of a hot liquid flowing up the side of my face. I now suspect that this was the start of my TN. Extraction date came along and I had the procedure done with much Valium and a strong local. General anesthesia makes me sick as a dog. Lets just say that the sensation of having someone DIGGING bone out of your jaw is not pleasant even though I couldn't feel any pain.
More to come.
Continuing...
I went through what I thought was a normal recovery. Plenty of pain killers and eventually the stitches came out. No pian to speak of I thought I was in good shape. For about 6-8 weeks that is. I started getting these weird pain sensation for the site of the extraction. Most notable when chewing or talking. I also had this spot right below my lower lip on the left side that of cause pain and shocks if I touched it. Seemed odd. Now my oral surgeon warn me that he would be getting close to some nerves and there could be some numbness if he got too close. I had also heard the horror stories of dry socket and other maladies associated with wisdom tooth extraction. After a year of this I assumed that I was the victim of one of these. For the most part the pain would be white noise and I could just push it to the back. I have a high threshold for pain(had gallstones and pancreitis that was a tummy ache). There were times where it would recede to almost normal and times where I would have tears in my eyes and try not to move. Towards the end of the second year I would have shocks with the wind blowing across the left side of my face. Now towards middle of 2010 I was having issues talking and couldn't eat much. This is where I went back to my oral surgeon to say WTF! Now according to him the extraction site healed perfectly and referred my to an endodontist. Full set of digital x-rays and sensitivitity tests, and again nothing wrong that they could see. They mentioned it could be neurological possibly trigemenal which I never heard of. Google time. Had a refferal to a neurologist. I read up and started checking things off. Yep, got all those. Went too neurologist and he said same. You either have TN or something that is manifesting just like it. Went for cranial MRI to rule out MS. Got results no MS and nothing visible near the nerve. He started me on 400mg of Carbatrol. After two days I could talk and eat carefully. Wow! Seems like such a simple thing, but people of haven't had this have no clue. Couple of weeks after that my mother-in-law was very sick and I noticed some light shock starting to come back. Went back for follow-up with neurologist and he mentioned stress can aggravate condition. He up me to 800mg. That helped. For the most part the pain was in the background with little intervals of pain-free. No in March 2011 I was laid-off, stress didn't help. I got a new job. I was in Florida, and the new job was in DesMoines. This meant I was going to be away from my wife for a while.
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Have you tried any topical treatments like Lidocaine?
My story is your story - sideways wisdom tooth - I woke up and the nurse was pale - they of course had to saw some bone off
4 hours later in ER - worse than childbirth in my mouth!!!! within the week I was shown the way to a neurologist - fast forward 2 years -- 1.5 years of those stupid drugs - then I found a TOP surgeon who did my MVD surgery -- I would go back to michigan and do it over if I had to!
You wouldn't happen to frequent the Cruise Critic boards would you? That handle looks familiar. My main issue with any of the surgical procedures is that once done there is no undoing. Especially when they are taking the shotgun approach without actually knowing what the problem is. there also don't seem to be good numbers on success rates. I plan on trying the topical capsasin.
Darkstar - Cruise Critic = Oh yes - am going on a cruise in 20 days for my 50th bday!!! So I've been on a lot lately - have never sailed NCL before - only carnival and HAL - so this will be new to go on the Sky!
I saw you were on cruise critic in 2010 !