I went to the pain Doctor last week and he thought this was TN after all. There were some pressure points that he checked after I explained the pain. I wasn't having any issues when I went in but he nearly set them off with the pressure points, only on the left side. I'm having some weird autoimmune neuropathy flare up right now that has been around the same time of the facial pain. He wanted to treat everything together - Gabapentin which I don't like, Cymbalta which hasn't helped in the past to my knowledge and then we were looking at some type of opiate that I didn't agree to. He said they usually do a Lidocaine infusion, but I'm severely allergic to Lidocaine, and it's a real allergy (I hear all the time that most people don't have the "real" allergies to it, they just don't like it). Nothing that I want to or can do. I needed to know what it was and what would help but I don't want to be on any of those meds. Gabapentin did not agree with me - hallucinations and loss of cognitive function. So I don't really know where that leaves me.

In any case, it is a deep boring pain that doesn't stop, but also may be TN which seems off to me. I wish there were better diagnostic criteria that he could have used but he thought it was TN set off by an autoimmune flare.

In my case, I had the dental stuff, but I don't know what the dentist could have done better. With my allergies, we were experimenting with alternatives to the local anesthetics and it was my idea so I surely wouldn't be upset with him. I'm a problem patient and I know it. I have RSD/CRPS and I think my body just attacks anything it doesn't like. I think a picture perfect dental procedure could have set me off. I was under general anesthesia for the second, and third round because the experiments didn't work. I don't think he did anything wrong -- and my tooth was infected it had to be done. My jaw was locked shut for 2 weeks afterward because of the alternative block, but steroids opened it up so I think again that it was my body reacting and a different person wouldn't have reacted that way. I'm grateful to him for trying every time I see him. I think it's just a risk and not a malpractice in every situation. There was definitely no negligence for mine.