Well, today is one month post surgery and I've been completely off of any medications for over a week (had to wean myself off). Still no pain! I hate to even phrase it that way, but, like others, on here have said.. that fear of the pain seems to linger for quite a while.
My energy has really come back in the last few days. One lingering issue I had was the feeling of having a wax blockage in my ear on the surgery side. There's nothing in there but I continued to have that feeling of a wax blockage and water being trapped. My doctor was confident that, as swelling subsided, that would go away. He thought the most likely explanation was that the tube that runs from the ear to the sinus cavity was being compressed by swelling. Anyway, it has improved dramatically in the last week. Still a little bit there, but I'm hopeful it will keep getting better. It's not made me regret the surgery at all.
We actually hosted a Christmas party last night, for work, with 30 people. Of course getting ready the last two days was a lot of work and lot's of running around and then at the party I spent hours talking with everyone and I lasted until 1am. I can't remember the last time I lasted more than a couple of hours at any such function. Talking continuously was always one of the main things that caused me pain. Yeehaaaa!
On another note, I know I've mentioned this before, but I would really encourage anyone considering surgery to look into having a resection of the GP nerve over a MVD. I think MVD's have produced some great results for people but the resection procedure is much more doable now. In both the resection and the MVD they enter the cranium the same way and they have to expose the GP nerve all the way down to the brain stem. The difference in the resection is that they stimulate the root branches of the nerve and observe for facial movement. Branches that do not control movement are resected. In this manner, the offending, pain carrying branches have been destroyed and nothing is left inside the cranium. Meningitis is much higher risk with MVD, and some people develop chronic meningitis with the only solution being to go back in and remove the teflon completely. The surgeon I had has done 8 GPN resections and nearly 200 Trigeminal Neuralgia resections and has'nt had any patients with long term repercussions and all had very good results with the vast majority having 100% relief.
Anyway, Merry Christmas All!
Ron