Well, I've been on Tegretol for.... *checks calendar* 3 days now, and although it hasn't completely cured the electric shocks (didn't expect them to go away overnight), it has brought along a new friend to play named ItchyScratchyOMG.
I'm pretty sure, sitting at work, I look like I have fleas. I try to be as subtle as possible, but man! I'm itchy! What amazes me is I have absolutely no rashes, no skin discoloration at all. After scratching all night last night, I really expected some red areas.
I had a pretty rough night last night, between my teething toddler who cried pretty consistently from 1am to nearly 5am, and having had an attack of my own around 8pm...it was a long night!
It was the first timeI I've used the nerve gel that it didn't work, so that kind of dampened my spirits as well. I certainly didn't expect it to be a magical cure, since it's not even medicine (it's all natural homepathic stuff), but I was kind of hoping it would keep me going until we could see if the Tegretol works or not.
I'm still using the nerve cream whenever possible, but I've noticed it kind of has it's own funky side effects. Namely, that side of my face is mostly numb, even when I'm not actively using the cream. Is that a side effect of the TN or of the cream? It was really noticable last night when my face got flushed red (was time for the Prednisone) but only half of my face lit up.
I can say that the attacks have gotten more "typical" since this second round of Prednisone, and, I suppose, the addition of the Tegretol. Instead of the hours-long burning and aching that had initially made me suspect a tooth ache, now they are more like lightening strikes, or forceful ice pick jabs.
My frustration with explaining these attacks to my doctors seems to stem from the fact that I consider an attack to be from the first lightening strike to the last one, which can be about 20-30 minutes. Each individual strike is only a few seconds long though, and I think that is the typical pain respsonse that they are expecting me to report on. However, since I get upwards of 30 of these strikes within an attack, it just seems to make more sense to report on the whole event, instead of saying "oh, there's one. Yup, there's another. Oooh yup. Ow."
I don't know. I'm really struggling with how much information to give them. I feel like when I do research and I keep track of things, they look at me like a drug seeker or a faker. Even before all the TN stuff, this is how I am! My father was a pharmacist. Just because I can rattle off drug names and pronounce them correctly, doesn't mean I'm a drug addict. I haven't even taken most of the drugs I know the names of.
Okay, enough whining. My break is over. Back to work!