Living with TN

Were all the issues resolved? Not sure. Not that I had any really serious episodes between December 2006 and February 2007 - but I did have this weird pain in my tongue which seemed to me to be a remnant and a constant reminder that they might come back. And sure enough, they did. This time it was cleaning my teeth that triggered it. So I finally gave in and accepted that I must start taking the tegretol.

And so it started - a small daily dose of tegretol to try to keep these terrible pains at bay. I felt really tired for the first few days, but that soon passed. Then in mid-March I felt constant pain in my teeth. So I went to the dentist and she identified a suspect tooth (or two) that might have a dead or dying nerve. She gave me a course of antibiotics which she said would determine if this was the case and hence if this was causing the pain I was feeling. As it turned out, one tooth did have a dying nerve and rather than risk any further pain (and likely triggers for the TN) I asked her to extract it. It seems that many TN sufferers have teeth removed in the early stages. Amazing how we all go through the same thought processes. Under different circumstances we might have tried to save the teeth, but with the fear of triggering further electric shocks, and also the hope that this might be the "cure", we get them extracted. In any event, the pain in my teeth continued even after the extraction. Of course, it wasn't toothache at all - it was TN masquerading again.

In those early days, the pains (both the lesser background pains and the violent electric shocks) went away completely for short periods and I would actually stop taking the tegretol for a week or two. But then they would return - and even when they didn't, there was the terrible feeling of dread, of anxiety, that at any moment a violent attack was going to start. The slightest twinge in the face created terror - and this was how it went for most of 2007.