Hello anyone.

I am 33yrs old and have been "tentatively" diagnosed with TN although I don't see a neurologist until December. I've been wearing a nightguard for about 2 years after a diagnosis of TMJ. A couple months ago I started to have symptoms of the random electric pain from ear to chin. I saw a dentist who suggested TN and recommended I go to the Wasser Pain Management Clinic here in Toronto. I looked into it on the web but they seemed to require a direct referral. I returned to the dentist and he took full facial x-rays to rule out anything dental. The x-rays didn't show anything but a cavity. That night I had a severe attack of pain which lasted longer than any other attack. I had been having single jabs or double jabs of pain, but that night it was a repeating lengthy attack. I took myself to emercency at Mt. Sinai and eventually saw the doctor on call. I explained my medical history and he said it did sound like TN. He prescribed carbamazepine. I started at 100mg twice daily and upped it to about 200mg twice daily. For about a week I felt like a complete moron which was very difficult to deal with in my line of work.

Eventually I felt normal and I felt like the carb was working. I played around with the dosage to try to minimize it, but I found that if I took it regularly, the the jabs were generally held at bay and if they started I would take another carb and they'd be gone within 45 minutes. These jabs were random but generally singular jolts.

Then I broke out in a crazy rash. I figured I was having an allergic reaction to the carb and my doc agreed so I stopped the carb and went on the baclophen with a side of tramacet for pain. Overnight things became hell. I got up in the morning and suddenly had an intense attack of the burning jabbing shocking piercing pain that lasted for about 30 minutes and actually brought me to tears.

I went back to the doc and asked for a scrip for gabapentin which he gave me. I'm now taking both baclophen and gabapentin and tramacet (an opioid pain killer) (my rash is going away indicating it was probably from the carb).

The new drugs are not yet working. Every morning I get up and eventually have little jolts until the major attack comes. This morning it lasted 26 minutes. Yesterday I had a follow up appt with the doc and as soon as I started talking to him I had an attack that lasted 20 minutes.

I am hoping desparately that this comination of gabapentin and baclophen will eventually work. I started with the gab at 300mg tid and the bac at 10mg tid. Today I've decided to start taking the bac 10mg every 4-5 hours to increase the daily dose to 50-60mg. I'm going to double my gab intake to 600mg tid also. Hopefully it won't make me too brain dead because I really need to get back to work next week as I've been off since last Wednesday.

This is a horrible ailment. I sit here drugged up stoned dreading the next attack. It's funny; the little jabs and jolts that used to be so painful before I ever had a lenghty attack are now minor little twinges that only forshadow the tortuous attacks to come. For me, when the attack comes, it is 60 seconds of pure pain where the brain goes blank and I flail around in a panic. Then my faculties will recover and I can sit and actually think. I note the time of the attack so that I can record the length. The pain alternates between shocking, jabbing, stabbing, burning, piercing, twitching, zapping, over and over again. I will think about how the first time it occurred it made me cry, but how now I can sit there and actually contemplate the pain and its severity and marvel at how excrutiating it is. I wonder how the left side of my face or my ear doesn't explode out of my head as it feels like it should. It's unbelieveable. I still fear those first 60 seconds.

Thanks for reading my story. If nothing else, I find it helpful to just record my thoughts.