When you guys say bilateral...
 

...do you mean the attacks come on both sides of the face at the same time or one side only at a time (but affects both sides at different times) or both?

My pain has switched from side to side from the very first time I had my symptoms. Yesterday it was on my right side: pain from my upper right jaw, my right cheeks, right eye, right temple, top of the head on the right side and down to the back of my head/neck on the right side. As I'm typing this, the fleeting pain is on my left cheek and temple. I thought I read somewhere that TN always starts on one side only and may develop on the other side for some people but you don't get it on both sides when you initially get it. :confused:

The incidence of bilateral T.N. is very low 5% and there is virtually no statistics. It is a lack of knowlege for anyone to comment, because they just don"t know. Sorry about no responce, you may get some info but as far as I know, there isn't anyone offering their experience
with bilateral T.N. Keep looking as you never know... Bless, Dbug7

Sorry to be slow in responding. In my case and referring to the classic TN pain, it appears on one side, independent of the other. But, there are times where I experience pain on the more active side, and the other side will give me a jolt. It seems like the nerves communicate with each other, but that doesn't happen too often. I also have a good deal of atypical TN pain and on one side its pretty constant and varies in intensity throughout the day. I also get this type of pain on the other side, but its not constant and it does occur while the other side is active. I find this hard to describe so I hope this response makes some sense. My experience early on with this conditon, the attacks were clearly on one side or the other without any cross-communication of the nerves.

I don't get TN pain to the back of my head, down to my neck. I do get occipital neuralgia/neuritis pain, and this affects the top, back, and sides of my head. My neck problems cause the occipital pain. There is another thread on this forum that addresses ON. You should check that one out as well. Have you seen a neurologist about your symptoms?

Trying out Tegretol
 

Thanks for your replies. The last neuro diagnosed me with TN after less than five minutes of talking to me and prescribed me 200mg Tegretol for the first five days followed by 400mg Tegretol for ten days. I'm now on my eighth day of Tegretol and see no improvement so far. Still having random and fleeting pain on both sides of my face and head and even a shooting pain in my abdomen (once), left cheek (once) and in my neck (twice) over the last eight days. On a scale of one to ten, the pain ranges from two to four (knock wood). :(

I'm part of the lucky 5% with bilateral TN....after three procedures on the right, which have been fairly successful, I began experiencing pain on the left. It is basically the same shooting pains, with an undercurrent of constant ache in my cheek and jaw bones.

I feel your pain - pun intended!

Both sides
 

I can't imagine what that would be like. My T.N. side keeps me busy. Dbug7

"with an undercurrent of constant ache in my cheek and jaw bones. "

I get that a lot with my atypical, but it isn't preceeded by electric shocks. Its funny how this condition presents differently with everyone and how our experiences vary. Some of my first flare ups were constant pain which would fluxuate and then after a four month bout of the constant, I took a drink and the classic lightening bolt shot right through my jaw. At least after it subsided, the constant pain eased up.

My symptoms move around from right to left to right again within the span of an hour. Is this typical?

This may be typical for you, but I don't think anyone can really say what is or isn't typical in that sense.