Hello all,
My name is Tasha. I am 26 years old. I've been having some facial pain that I originally believed to be a toothache for the past month and a half. After a short time I began questioning if it was in fact my tooth. My toothaches in the past seemed to be consistent and throbbing, while this has been sporadic and feels like an electric shock. I can go days without any episodes of this pain. Then out of no where I'll feel an electric shock in my left cheek bone. At times it would go away immediately after, other times it would stick around for a very short time and spread to the surrounding areas of my left cheek bone.
The other night it came on and it was one of the times it stuck around. Considering it usually doesn't last long I tried to ignore it, but every time it would begin to go away it would start all over again. After a little bit of this I took some quick acting alieve. Over an hour later it was still coming on and hitting strong and staying for a few minutes, then leaving and coming back. So I wound up going to Urgent Care because it was late evening so I couldn't go to the doctor yet didn't feel it was an emergent situation but I couldn't take it anymore and wanted something more for pain. And this is not like me. I will lay in bed in my dark room all day long crying from a migraine over taking pain medication for it. I do not do pain medication lightly.
Well anyway, after inspecting my mouth and teeth, hearing my explanation of what was happening and asking me a few questions the Urgent Care Doctor said he believes I have Trigeminal Neuralgia. He said my symptoms do not sound like a toothache and there is no evidence in my mouth/teeth that would suggest a probable toothache. He said he couldn't give me a definite diagnosis without a MRI and couldn't give me the medication that would be the most helpful without a definite diagnosis so he prescribed me Motrin 800 to help until I could get to my PCP and have a MRI done.
I've been doing a lot of research on this since then. I've found that its extremely rare to occur in someone under 50 and when it does the cause is generally due to an Aneurysm, MS, or a Brain Tumor though there are some cases in which it is not from any of those things. Typically I wouldn't be too worried, I'd figure well it's probably one of those things where it isn't any of those or I don't have it all. But to say my family hasn't had the best luck with health in these past two years would be a massive understatement. Four diagnosed with cancer (all in same week), three of which have passed away due to the cancer and one is now on Hospice doing very poorly due to the cancer. Not to mention other serious health issues with other family members that have all been popping up within the past two years.
I'm not a real superstitious person, but I have to admit this is really freaking me out, big time. I'm terrified to get a MRI.. or any other kind of radiology work done for that matter because it seems like every person who has had any kind of radiology work in my family in the past 2 years has received devastating news afterward! I am going to do it anyway, because if this is something I have, according to the Urgent Care doctor it is only going to get worse. So I'm going to want to know for sure so I can have something that may help, no matter how scary a MRI may be to me. I'm also afraid of if I do have this, why? They say it's rare for someone under 50 to have it without one of those three things, but how rare is it?
So this is my question to all of you. How many of you who are suffering from this are under 50, and what is your underlying cause or do you even have an underlying cause?