Hi Wittsea,

I recognize your name from another forum where I have been a lurker for many years.

I was just wondering, would the weakness and pain in your face and jaw and teeth area be related to either grinding your teeth at night? or maybe it could be TMJ or what ever they are calling that temporomandibular joint disorder these days???

Is this a new symptom for you and does it have anything to do with your current pain management issue?

In doing some reseach, I found something called myofacial pain-dysfunction (MPD) syndrome. Most cases are a result from tension relieving jaw clenching or grinding habits, or a centrally generated increase in masticatory muscle tonus in response to stress. The ensuing muscle fatigue in turn induces spasms of the masticatory muscles. This sounds like what they are trying to attribute your symptoms too.

Diagnosis is based on clinical findings, the patient c/o unilateral, dull, aching, preauricular pain that radiates to the temporal region, tenderness in one or more muscles of mastication, jaw limitation, joint pain upon awakening. Since you don't have any issues with chewing, this seems to rule this dx out somewhat.

Degnerative arthritis can also cause these same symptoms so this must be ruled out.

X-rays of the area are usually normal although secondary degenerative changes are seen in the very late cases. Also arthritis can be dx by x-ray in this area.

I was wondering, do you have any swelling or discoloration in these areas that are bothering you?

Oh one more thought I had, there is something called mysthenia gravis. I believe I spelled that incorrectly but I know the main symptoms for that are facial weakness and I don't mean total weakness of the whole face, but weakness that is either one sided or are in a specific muscle areas.

You may have better luck going to an eye/ear/nose/throat doc since these symptoms are related to that area of your body.

I hope some of these ideas help although these may have already been suggested to you. I hope that I don't come across as a "know it all".

Its just in my line of work I have alot of experience with sypmtoms that cause pain and different ways of trying to relieve that pain.

No, I am not a Doc. I am an Rn of many years and I work in pharmacetical research which specializes in testing new pain medications. I don't actually develop the new pain meds, I test already developed "investigational" pain meds on subjects who have a variety of painful conditions. My job involves gathering info for the docs to dx the condition each subject has, then I actually dose the person with the experimental drug and record all the data including how well the med does or does not work as well as any potential side effects.

Although I have signed a confidentiality agreement where I can't talk about the drugs we are currently testing. I can say that for us folks that have to use pain management just to get through the day. I can tell you there are alot of new, wonderful things being tested out there and hopefully if they get passed by the FDA, we will have many more options for pain management.

Oops, I got a little off topic there, I hope they can figure out what the heck is going on and that it is an easy fix.

oh, by the way....I think docs use that"stress/anxiety dx when they haven't got a clue themselves!

Be Safe,

Satchelle