Well, the lottery for the "world's worst pain". My life's resume in short: 44, happy wife, mother, friend, entrepreneur, gym rat, marathon runner, health nut, volunteer tennis coach, and suicide disease patient...wait what?
That's right...suicide disease.
My life turned upside down in 72 hours on my 44th birthday. It all started with a tooth ache on my lower left jaw. Tooth number 30 started to bother, a low level throb intermittently, then aching something awful. I know! Advil! "I'll take two please!" Ahhh.
Day 2. Ok, better, just a nagging throb but climbing quickly, "Advil please!" thank you... "No, wait, it's not working!" Hmm, how about a massage! that's it!
Why?!? Oh why did I try and push against it to counter the pain? Why did I rub along my jaw trying to soothe it? Wait, it's moving!, "Where are you going? Stay on my jaw! Stop climbing up my face!"
What came after was like a faucet slowly being opened, within 48 hours my pain went from 3 to 300 full speed, an agonizing torrent of electric shocks over taking my lower and upper jaw, my forehead then inside my head, "God! NO! Please, turn it off! Help!"
Emergency dental visit, "I'd like a cavity please?"
72 hours in, can't sleep, can't lay, shaking from pain, headed out to an emergency dental visit praying, "Please let it be a cavity?" After a panoramic xray I could hardly stay still for and begging for it to be a receding gum line, my dentist says, "Michelle, your teeth are fine, you've had no dental surgeries on that side, you might have Trigeminal Neuralgia, call [this] Neuro Surgeon ASAP!" TMJ? is that what she said? But that's not the accronym. "What did she call it, Tri-what?"
Driving home and thinking, "Oh God, I'm going to pass out from the pain" Quick! Pull into urgent care clinic.
How about a shot and a cocktail with a side of nerve pain a la cart?
I was immediately taken back to a bed in the urgent care clinic. Reconfirming possible Trigemnial Neuralgia, the Dr. prescribed a shot in the butt of Torredol (muscle relaxer) plus scripts of Hydrocodone (pain med) and Tegretol (epilepsy med). As I waited I managed to call the Neuro surgeon's office. I could barely speak. My mouth started locking up, the receptionist on the other line could hear my deteriorating state of coherance and upgraded my appointment from a month out to the next day saying, "We'll see you tomorrow, We respect your pain". The nurse came to administer the shot just as my husband arrived to catch my body going limp from the Torredol. Great! Now my body is useless while my head is in utter torment! The next hours pass slowly and unmercifully at home. The muscle relaxer wore away. Holding my head and having body chills from fighting the urge to black out a thought raced across my mind suddenly, "Someone, please, shoot me!"...
It's tomorrow, I'm loaded up with Hydrocodone and Tegretol that aren't touching the pain. Holding my head, body trembling, crying, and doing the pain dance, I can't sit for a proper eval. The Neuro Surgeon looks at me, "Take two Oxtellar" (epilepsy med) pushing 2 tabs out of it's sample pack and points,"Straight to the ER young lady, I'm ordering your MRI now."
I'm taken straight back, everyone shuffling quickly around me, lines, needles, tubes and compounding pain. "Oh God, Please, what's happening to my life?" Thoughts of my husband and children, all the activities we do, Is my life over?, but how? Where did this come from? What did I do to my body?
"Ma'am, it's time for your MRI". Why am I having an MRI?
It's April 13th, my 44th birthday, the Surgeon walks in to announce that I have Trigeminal Neuralgia and that he doesn't see signs of MS (wait, what? Who said said MS?). I'm told I have a blood vessel resting on the nerve behind my ear. Then my options are laid out in a roughly "take your pick" manner, Glycerin Rhizotomy, Gamma Knife Radiation or Brain Surgery (Micro Vascular Decompression). Happy Birthday to me!
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